A new study has found that preschool-aged children who live in homes that engage in three specific routines have a 40 percent lower prevalence of obesity than kids who live in homes where none of the routines are followed.

Researchers at Temple University and Ohio State University found that eating dinner as a family, getting adequate sleep and limiting kids’ weekday television viewing time were all helpful in reducing the risk of childhood obesity.

The team analyzed data on 8,550 4-year olds for the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics. They compared the kids’ body mass indexes (BMI) with their families’ household routines and found that kids who lived in households that followed all three routines had a 14.3 percent risk of being obese, compared to 24.5 percent chance among kids whose households didn’t follow any of them.

The researchers suggested that adopting these three household routines could be an attractive obesity-prevention strategy for all families with young children, especially because these routines may benefit children’s overall development.

"The routines were protective even among groups that typically have a high risk for obesity," said the study’s lead author, Sarah Anderson. "This is important because it suggests that there’s a potential for these routines to be useful targets for obesity prevention in all children." said the study’s lead author, Sarah Anderson.