Family dinners have transformed from home-cooked meals at the dining room table to take-out in front of the T.V., according to a recently published Cornell study, which examined the correlation between irregular work hours and family food choices.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, was led by Prof. Carol Devine, nutritional science, and arose after a preliminary study showed that work schedules are the biggest obstacle for working parents when it comes to eating healthily.

“There are factors in people’s lives that make it difficult to adhere to nutritional regulations that the federal government has made over the years,” said Prof. Elaine Wethington, human development and co-investigator for the study.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, surveyed 25 working mothers and 25 working fathers from low and moderate-income areas in upstate N.Y. They span across three racial categories, all graduated from high school and most work part-time or full-time with a varied weekly schedule.

Due to the nature of their jobs, which are usually low-paying clerical, manufacturing, service or retail positions, parents work long, irregular hours, and cannot afford to take an unpaid lunch break or buy expensive organic foods. They return home too exhausted to cook for themselves or their children, according to Wethington.

As a result, parents turn to what Devine calls “food choice coping strategies,” which are ways that parents provide food for their families under work and time constraints.

The study identifies 22 coping strategies, including eating canned or frozen foods, skipping a meal and overeating later, having dinner on the go or feeding children separately, which Devine said can lead to each family member being served a different meal.

“When I was a kid, we used to have what was called ‘meat-and-three’,” said Wethington, who remembers her family dinners consisting of a meat item and three servings of fruits or vegetables. But this ‘meat-and-three’ concept is less common in low-income households today.

The study also found that some food coping strategies are gender specific. Mothers tend to keep food on hand at work, skip breakfast and buy restaurant and prepared foods rather than cook a meal. Fathers are more likely to skip family meals and opt for take-out.

“The strategy of going out, getting food, cooking it and serving it every night is just not realistic in the way these [people’s] lives are organized,” Wethington said.

Despite their convenience, the top coping strategies that parents choose, such as eating fast-food, skipping meals and watching T.V. while eating, are often the ones linked to poorer diets and obesity, according to Devine.

The results of this study suggest that improved working conditions will help parents use positive food choice coping strategies.

Devine suggests that employers should consider “structural changes,” such as implementing more reasonable hours, compensating for lunch breaks and offering healthier food in vending machines to promote better nutritional habits among their employees.

This study, along with the research from two other papers in a series about working conditions and food choices by Devine, might also be used to develop better educational and intervention programs for low-income families and working parents, according to Wethington.

Wethington said that current intervention programs usually focus on healthy eating education. This knowledge, however, becomes ineffective when the lifestyles of low-income families make healthy eating habits harder and less convenient.

Devine and Wethington are currently involved in a new project, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which will allow them to apply the results from this and previous studies to create intervention programs in Harlem, N.Y. among low-income families.

“We need to let policy makers know it’s not just a matter of promoting good health,” Devine said. “We’re trying to give people interested in workplace wellness more directions to go in.”