CINCINNATI, Jun 14, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Kids who eat their meals while watching television spend far more time in front of the television than it actually takes to finish their food, a new study reveals.
The finding is significant, researchers said, because a strong link has been made between childhood obesity, a precursor to numerous health problems during adulthood, and excessive TV viewing.
The study, lead researcher Brian Saelens, a clinical psychology and pediatrics professor at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, looked at 169 families with children in 1990. The children were six years old at the time and their families were re-evaluated in 1996. During that period, the number of TVs in the home increased, as did the number of VCRs, the percentage of kids with TVs in their own bedrooms, and the frequency they ate meals while watching TV. The children's height and weight were also measured.
By the time the children reached age 12, they had watched about five more hours of TV each week than they had at age six, spending an average of 26 hours every week in front of the television.
Every meal consumed in front of the TV added between 38 minutes and 73 minutes to their television watching, Saelens reported. The study also found 12-year-olds who watched more than two hours of TV daily weighed more than kids of the same age who watched less than two hours every day.
Saelens said the biggest factor was not how many TVs were in the house, but the parents household rules about watching television.
"The thing that struck me was that consistency of TV time when eating a meal with the total amount of TV time the kid had," Saelens told United Press International.
Television and obesity are a known link, Saelens added, but the relationship is like the chicken-and-egg question. "Unfortunately, there's no sign it's getting better," he said, though some research has shown when TV time was reduced, children lost weight.
Estimated childhood obesity in the United States has shot up in the last decade by as much as 70 percent, Saelens said. Joan Carter, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and a department of pediatrics instructor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston strongly agreed the problem for kids is getting worse.
"The food choices and the types foods people tend to eat in front of TV aren't salads and vegetables, it's pizza and microwaved foods and macaroni and cheese and foods that tend be high-caloric foods," Carter told UPI.
Another problem with eating in front of the television is children -- and adults -- lose track of what they're consuming. "If you're not paying attention to what you're eating, there's a tendency to overeat," Carter said.
"Conversations with people tend to slow down your eating," she added. "If you're talking, you're not eating."
Gathering around the dinner table is much more interactive and people are far more likely to be aware of hunger cues coming from their bodies to signal when they are full compared to when they are passively in front of the TV unaware of how much they are consuming, Carter explained.
TV advertisements promoting foods to children also send the wrong message, she said. "It's easy to get wrong idea of what's the appropriate amount of food" from the numerous food commercials on TV.
The findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. The study was funded partially by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., a division of the National Institutes of Health.
(Reported by Katrina Woznicki, UPI Science News, in Washington)
Copyright 2002 by United Press International.