When I got married my husband brought dinner into the household. Inititally, my daughter, then 11, was skeptical. Before he arrived dinner was a haphazard affair that she and I rarely ate together. I usually rushed home from work, fed her, and then ate myself after she was in bed.  

But he wasn’t having any of that.  Three or four nights a week, whenever we could manage it, he made dinner and the three of us sat down to eat it.  That’s when we talked.   

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have published several studies on how regular family meals can have a powerful affect on the healthy behavior of teenagers. Kids who sit down to dinner — or brunch or any other family meal — at least five times a week are less likely to engage in all kinds of dangerous things. Today, they report that for girls, the benefits of sharing meals with their families has staying power. Those who ate least five times a week with their families as adolescents had half the odds of drinking, smoking or using marijuana as older teenagers. 

They don’t know why it doesn’t seem to have the same affect on boys. They speculate that girls are more likely to pick up on the nuanced messages they get from adults.  I don’t know either, because I just had the one girl.  Over time she came to look forward to those dinners — the food more than the conversation. She called them “real dinners.” When she had a bad day, or was hungry, or was overwhelmed with homework, she would say, “are we having a real dinner tonight?”

Like most adolescents and teenagers, she would try to resist engaging with us. But my husband was having any of that either. He could always find a way to get her going, and before she realized it, she was hooked into a conversation. 

Now, when she comes home, dinner is a big deal. A tradition. He asks her ahead of time what she wants, and they discuss the menu in detail.  When we sit down we talk, sometimes for a long time. And it’s not at all hard to engage her anymore.

What are your family dinner traditions?

Apparently when it comes to broccoli not all men are created equal.

About half the population carries a gene called GMST1. Those people get more benefit from eating broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables than the other half. Now, researchers know why — at least when it comes to broccoli and prostate cancer.

In a study published this week in the on line journal PLoS ONE, men at risk for prostate cancer ate either 400 grams of broccoli or 400 grams of peas every week for 12 months. Researchers measured the activation of every gene in their cells. They found the broccoli eaters had more gene activation than the pea eaters. In fact, broccoli had a “profound effect on the gene expression” in the men with the GMST1 gene, the scientists wrote. Eating just a few portions of broccoli per week, they think, can amplify the signal to the cell nucleus, where genes are expressed, and that reduces the risk for cancer.

Of course, most of us have no idea whether or not we carry the GMST1 gene, so what to do? Eat MORE vegetables.

“Eating two or three portions of cruciferous vegetables per week, and maybe a few more if you lack the GSTM1 gene, should be encouraged,” the researchers concluded.

Here’s a list of the cruciferous club: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, rocket, watercress, garden cress, kale, bok choy, radish, horseradish and wasabi.

And don’t forget the red wine.

Eat a big breakfast.

Well, maybe not that big.

Moving right along from coffee to what goes with it, we know (and our mothers knew) that it’s always important to eat breakfast. Researchers know that teenagers who eat breakfast are healthier and are less likely to become overweight.

Now research presented this week at a national medical conference has found that eating a substantive breakfast high in carbs and protein actually helps obese people not only lose weight, but keep it off long term.

Diets that restrict carbohydrates are notoriously short lived. They increase cravings for carbohydrates and slow metabolism. As a result, after a short period of weight loss, most people regain their lost weight quite quickly.

The scientists, who presented their study at the Endocrine Society Conference underway in San Francisco this week, put 94 obese, physically inactive women on two different diets. Both were low in fat and calories. Half of the women were on a very low carb diet, consisting of 1,085 calories per day and a breakfast of 290 calories — 7 grams of carbs and 12 grams of protein.

The “big breakfast diet” consisted of 1,240 calories a day, but about half of those calories were consumed at breakfast — 58 grams of carbs and 47 of protein. They ate 395 calories for lunch and 235 calories for dinner. (Think of it as an upside down food pyramid.)

After four months, the women on the low-carb diet dropped an average of about 28 pounds, and the women on the big-breakfast diet lost nearly 23 pounds on average. But after 8 months, the low-carb dieters regained an average of 18 pounds, while the big-breakfast group continued to lose weight, shedding another 16.5 pounds on average. Women who ate a big breakfast reported feeling less hungry, especially before lunch, and having fewer cravings for carbs than did women in the other group.

Problem solved. Does this inspire you to change what you eat for breakfast?

If you like to drink coffee, drink more. Lots more. It probably won’t hurt you and may even save your life, especially if you’re a woman.

Coffee has always been a pretty benign drug for most people. Now it turns out that it may actually reduce the risk of death from heart disease and other causes.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health studied the histories of 125,000 men and women who reported how much coffee they drank between 1980 and 2004. The more coffee they drank, the less likely they were to die from a heart attack or cardiovascular disease. That was especially true for women. Compared to those who didn’t drink coffee, those who drank 5 to 7 cups per week had 7 percent lower risk for death. The real coffee addicts who drink 4 to 5 cups per day had a 26 percent lower risk of death. The lower risk was mostly related to heart disease, but cancer deaths in women were lower, too, the researchers found.

It’s not the caffeine that does it because they found a similar pattern in the people who drank decaffeinated coffee.

So what’s going on? Antioxidants, they think. Like blue berries, green tea and chocolate, coffee contains antioxidants. Those are the chemicals that snag the free-floating molecules in our bodies called free radicals. Free radicals, created by the body’s natural metabolic processes like breathing and digesting food, are culprits in aging and disease. In particular, they are related to the inflammatory process that causes plaque to build up in our arteries, causing cardiovascular disease.

The authors of the research study, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, say it doesn’t prove coffee is the fountain of youth. It could be something else about coffee drinkers that contributes to their longer lives.

But never mind that. If you’re reading this with a cup of coffee at your side, just think about how how all those antioxidants are running around your bloodstream picking off those nasty free radicals to keep your arteries wide open. And enjoy.

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer is a mom and an expert on what drives a lot of parents nuts — adolescents and their eating habits. She is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota and the lead researcher on a study published today that looks at what happens when parents of overweight kids tell them to go on a diet. They are more likely to stay fat. You can read about the study and the university’s  Project EAT project here.

She will be here on BodyTalk today to answer questions from readers about the epidemic of overweight and obesity in teenagers and what parents can do. 

She is also the author of a book called “I’m, Like, SO Fat,” which provides advice and guidance for parents on how to help their teenagers (productively) with eating and exercise in a weight obsessed world. The motto of her book she says is “Do more. Talk less.” That means you have to walk the walk you want your kids to walk. Yes, easier said than done. That gets us back to the whole do more talk less thing.

Her study published today, based on surveys of Minnesota adolescents and their parents, found that half of the parents whose kids are overweight don’t know it. That’s pretty par for the course, she says, butn itn turns out their kids might be better off. The parents who do know that their kids are too heavy often do the wrong thing by telling them to go on a diet. That tends to backfire, she found.

But she has a lot of useful, practical advice on what parents can do to help their kids.  So ask her a question, and check back this afternoon.