Barriers to Healthy Family Dinners and Preventing Child Obesity: Focus Group Discussions with Parents of 5-to-8-Year-Old Children.

Overall, parents had a desire to have family dinners with their children, but they felt that there are many barriers keeping them from establishing or maintaining consistent family mealtimes. Future research, as well as child obesity prevention and intervention efforts, should consider these barriers and suggested solutions in efforts to promote healthy and consistent family meals as a means of lowering the prevalence of childhood obesity.