What we already know...

[elfs]

The Journal of Adolescent Health tells us what we already knew: girls who ate four family meals a week were only 1/3rd as likely to have an eating disorder, and girls who ate five times a week were 1/4th as likely to have an eating disorder as their peers. Combine this with the fact that boys who sit down to five or more family meals per week were significantly less likely to smoke or try drugs, were better-adjusted to the pressures of school, and had fewer motivational problems doing their homework.

Darymple's observation of an enclave of India natives in the middle of his poor district is spot on: "And the willingness of Indians to take trouble over what they eat and to treat meals as important social occasions that impose obligations and at times require the subordination of personal desire is indicative of an entire attitude to life that often permits them, despite their current low incomes, to advance up the social scale." [Emphasis mine.]