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what you see is what you eat, according to the latest study to confirm that watching TV encourages children to eat more junk food. But the researchers say that there may be an easy way to counter the unhealthy snacks in front of the tube, simply by putting healthier foods easily accessible.
Leah Lipsky and Ronal Iannotti, the scientific staff of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Eunice Kennedy Shrive, report that for every hour of children's television shows, they are 8% less likely to eat fruit every day, more than 18% likely to eat sweets, and 16% more likely to eat fast food. These results, reported this week in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine land earlier studies that have linked watching TV with poor eating habits in children.
The reasons for the association are not surprising: young people watching TV are exposed to more advertising for unhealthy foods like fast food or soda, advertisements for fruit and vegetables fresh. television. fruit they ate. "Of course, the link was not nearly as strong as that between the TV and the increased consumption of candy, soda and fast food in general," Lipsky said. "But it kind of suggests that if you have to other options available, and not have the unhealthy options available, children can be encouraged to eat perhaps more fruit. "
This is the message that it Iannotti and hope that parents will take away from their study, which involved more than 12,000 students in grades 5 to 10. The researchers asked the children how long they spent every day watching television, using the computer or playing video games, and also asked the students to report how often they consumed a variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, soda and fast food.
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more TV kids watched, the more unhealthy food they ate. Even taking into account that the children sit in front of television or computer could simply eat more overall boredom, the relationship between television time and poor eating habits remained. This suggests that the link goes beyond excessive snacking. "The behaviors that we consider part of a pattern of behaviors that are most likely related to obesity," said Iannotti.
In other words, watch TV can establish a deeper pattern of poor eating habits that can put children up not only for future obesity, but also for many chronic diseases associated overweight, such as diabetes, sleep apnea and heart problems. When children spend more time in front of the screen, they are also less likely to exercise or engage in physical activity can burn calories and keep the heart healthy.
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Lipsky and Iannotti recommend that parents initially limit the amount of time children spend in front of a TV or computer - the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests more than two hours per day for younger children - and since avoid TV altogether is probably unrealistic, at least try to listen television or the environment using a clean computer by giving good kids -them snacks such as fruit and nuts. If eating in front of the TV is blind, at least snacking on healthy foods can help offset some of the bad behaviors TV promotes.
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Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.
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