Orange juice, cereal, milk, eggs, toast, bacon—and more milk. An educational short film from the 1950s teaches children about the importance of good eating habits. The narrator touts this combination of breakfast items as “good, healthful food”. Seventy-five years later, we can learn something other than just what to eat for breakfast from the film: the importance of the activity itself—of eating breakfast together as a family. An article from TIME reports on the growing trend of American families who eat breakfast together. Let’s discuss the reasons why remote work allows more American families to eat breakfast together like they did in the past, and how this benefits our health.
Time Spent Commuting to Work and Health Outcomes
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average one-way travel time to work is about 28 minutes1. My current place-of-work is 1.5 hours away from my house. I know (from multiple Reddit treads) that there’s a lot of people who also have to deal with the stresses of long commutes into work everyday. Being unable to take a slow morning—lounge in bed for a few minutes, sip coffee with Bible study, take a morning poop in the comfort of my own home, eat a hearty breakfast—is one of the things I, and others apparently, regret most about taking a job with a long commute.
Time spent commuting to work is related to multiple health outcomes. People who have longer commuting times and distances tend to be less satisfied with work and life, be less physically active2, and have poorer sleep3. This is probably because of the trade-offs that must be made between commuting time and health-related activities like cooking nutritious meals. Overtime, these types of behavioral patterns may contribute to heightened risk for becoming overweight4.(Important side note: the mode of commuting has varying influence on health outcomes. For example, people who walk or cycle to work might fair better than people who drive5, but the general consensus is that long commutes to work are no good).
In the past, did American Families Eat Breakfast Together?
A user on Reddit’s r/AskOldPeople posed “Did your family eat breakfast together?” to which a multitude of older adults responded about life in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Many users reported only eating dinner together, with breakfast being a more “cafeteria”, “grab-and-go” style. Others explained that breakfast was eaten as a family only on weekends, after church on Sundays. But still, a good amount of users described how Monday through Friday, dad, mom and kids would sit around a table of “good, healthful” eggs, bacon and toast before work and school.
People were a lot slimmer in the 1970s. Perhaps, this family breakfast habit played a role. Many studies report that, for children and adolescents, having regular family meals is associated with lower weight, better diet quality and fewer unhealthy weight-control behaviors6. Less commonly researched, but in adults, too, family meals “may contribute to the social and emotional wellbeing of parents”7. Not to mention, it’s been shown that people who skip breakfast are more likely to be overweight8. One study in particular finds that family breakfast, and not shared family lunch or dinner, was inversely associated with obesity9.
How Remote Work has made it possible for American Families to Eat Breakfast Together at Home
As of 2025, about 22.8% of employees work at least partially remotely. In the 1970s, only 4% of employees were able to do this. Yet, it seems that a greater share of these families of the past found it so important to eat breakfast together that they made it work. Maybe they were in a better position to spare the 20 minutes10 it takes to eat a meal together because their commute times into work were shorter than they are today.
Today, most parents share the sentiment that it’s important and enjoyable for their family to share meals. However, barriers like time constraints and conflicting schedules make this difficult11. Well now, with work arrangements that eliminate or reduce commuting time, we can and should get back to this everyday habit of eating breakfast together as a family.
- https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/commuting/guidance/acs-1yr.html ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819363/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9713913/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3462828/ ↩︎
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33034873/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5935527/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6309329/ ↩︎
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31918985/ ↩︎
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27514247/ ↩︎
- https://time.com/5669532/family-meal-breakfast/ ↩︎
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3833880/ ↩︎