Faced with alarming obesity figures, various public health strategies that aim to change the habits of people and combat obesity have been implemented. One strategy has been promoting family meals. However, various studies question the benefits associated with this strategy. This article presents a review of the literature investigating the family meal. We present three primary perspectives: those that emphasize function, those that discuss social structure and articles that consider the family meal as a result of lifestyle. In this review of the main theoretical guidelines, we argue that the family meal is an idealized institution, a discussion that seeks to contribute to the debate of future health interventions that aim to change people's health habits.