Dining together with family and mental well-being of young people: A study conducted in four Asian countries

Dining together is undoubtedly a kind of pleasurable moment and a chance to enjoy a delicious meal shared with family members that can improve the well-being of human beings. Embarking on the notion, we believed that dining together is vital for the well-being of individuals. Hence, we hypothesized that having a strong family connectedness, family togetherness, and relationship and family dynamic can foster a nurturing environment for promoting the mental well-being of young people. A small-scale preliminary study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility and improve the study design before full-scale research. This preliminary study focuses on the context of four Asian countries namely Iran, Bangladesh, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The results of the study show that the contribution of family connectedness, family togetherness, and relationship and family dynamic on the mental well-being of young people is not similar in these four countries. The findings suggest that though there are some similarities in gatherings for dining in these countries, each country carries its distinctive cultural background which could have created dissimilar behaviour.