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Monday, August 6, 2012

Is too much TV making our kids fat?

How often do we have to allow our kids to sit before the tube to watch their favourite TV shows? Find out by reading this...

Is too much TV making our kids fat?
Television is an intrinsic part of our culture and it's inevitable that our children will watch it. It can be entertaining and educational: but it can contribute to childhood obesity.
Television is pervasive and the average Australian schoolleaver will have spent more time watching telly than in the classroom! Television has the potential to impart information, inform opinion and provide relaxation. But it may also negatively impact on a child’s health and portray certain models and values to children before they are cognitively ready to separate fantasy or opinion from fact, or to critically assess what they are watching.
The television-watching habits a child acquires as a pre-schooler are likely to stay with them for life, which means there is an opportunity to impart healthy lifestyle choices. So how do you avoid the pitfalls?


Couch potatoes
The big concern about television-watching and children’s health is obesity. The ratio of Australian pre-schoolers who are overweight or obese is growing rapidly. We are now so used to seeing overweight children, that parents of children who are a healthy weight for their height may see them as “skinny”, and children who are overweight may be seen as “normal”.
This explosion in body weight is due to changes in diet and activity – and televisionwatching may contribute adversely to both. Increasing hours spent watching TV is associated with increasing obesity, and this is worse for children who are otherwise not very active or who have a high fat intake.
The relationship between obesity and television-watching is as true for the preschooler as it is for the older child. The excess weight accumulates over the years, so the younger a child starts logging up hours in front of the TV, the more years they have to accumulate fat. Children’s bodies have the least fat at around 4-6 years of age.
The younger a child hits this point and then starts gaining body fat, the more likely they are to be obese in later life; so fatness in the pre-school age may have longterm consequences. Fewer minutes spent in vigorous activity and more minutes spent watching TV are the two factors most strongly linked with body-fat acquisition at this age. As low-fat intakes are only recommended from age 5, for pre-schoolers regular active play is the best way to help prevent later obesity.
Negative impacts
Television may have a negative impact on children’s body composition in a number of ways, including:
   Taking the place of physical activity
   Exposing the child to ‘eating prompts’ in food ads, and increasing food intake by eating while watching
   Effectively advertising high-fat and/or high-sugar foods
   Slowing the body’s energy use.
Most kids relax in front of the TV and don’t expend much energy. Foods are the most commonly advertised products on children’s TV, and ads for high-fat, highsugar foods predominate. A study of Sydney television showed that confectionery and fast food were the most common categories of commercials in children’s viewing hours. Research consistently shows that they influence children’s food preferences.
Food intake in children increases after exposure to food ads, and they are more likely to choose advertised products. ‘Pestering’ for a given food seems to be related to the number of hours spent watching TV, and requests for particular foods are linked to those advertised. Obese children are more likely to recognise food ads than lean children.
Young children are likely to see foods promoted as “good” as being healthy. One study showed that the nutritional knowledge and reasoning of early-primaryschool children decreased with the amount of television they watched. For school-age children, poorer food choices is linked with time spent in front of the ‘box’. Greater TV use is associated with higher intakes of sugar, fatty and salty snacks and fizzy drinks, and lower intakes of fruit and vegetables.
As a group, foods advertised on TV are high in fat, saturated fat, protein, free sugars and salt, and low in fibre and some micro-nutrients. These are the kinds of food associated with obesity and dental caries in childhood and heart disease, diabetes and cancer in adulthood.
Effect on behaviour
Television exposes children to experiences that are not a normal part of their life. It has been known for some time that childhood exposure to media violence predicts aggressive behaviour in young adult males and females. This is more likely where the aggressive TV character is one that children identify with (the hero) and where they perceive the TV violence to be real.
More recently, researchers have found that each hour of television viewed at age 4 was associated with an increased likelihood of being a bully at 6-9 years. Reassuringly, parental support and interaction at 4 years protected against becoming a bully.
What do they learn from TV?
Children learn from TV from a young age. Babies react to the emotional meaning of television content and 2-year-olds can learn from pictures presented on video (whereas learning from pictures is more difficult at this age). Children under 4 are unable to tell the program from the commercial and have difficulty understanding that what they are watching is not real.
Studies have shown that TV-watching before age 3 may be associated with somewhat poorer cognitive development in early primary school, and this was likely to increase with the amount of time spent watching TV. In primary school, children who spend more time watching TV tend to spend less time on homework, studying and reading for pleasure, and are more impulsive, which also affects their academic performance.
Reassuringly, one group of researchers following pre-schoolers from the age of 2 and testing reading, maths, receptive vocabulary and school readiness found that it was not so much how you watch as what you watch. They found that viewing what they called “child-audience informative programs” between 2 and 3 years old predicted high subsequent performance in academic skills; frequent viewers of general audience programs did less well. Children who had good skills at age 5 tended to prefer the informational programs to cartoons. So some TV programs may add to the experiences you give your child.
8 telly watching tips
1.Television-watching should be a small part of life and not the default activity for when nothing structured is on. Creative play, reading and hobbies are preferable as primary pursuits. So how do you keep them away from the box?  Minimise the number of TVs available. Don’t allow one in your child’s room. Have the TV positioned where you can keep an eye on what they’re watching and out of view of the dining room.
2.Model good behaviour. Turn the TV on to watch a selected program and turn it off when you have finished. Don’t snack as you watch.
3.When your child asks, “Can I watch TV?” ask them what they want to watch. Let them know what is going to happen when it finishes.
4.Use the classification system (‘G’, ‘PG’, ‘M’, ‘MA’) to help select programs. Programs made for children are rated ‘C’ for primary-school children and ‘P’ for pre-school children.
5.Make tapes of programs of good educational content, such as Sesame Street, for the times that you would like them to watch – for example, when they’re too sick for other activities. Choose ones that are educational and non-violent.
6.Try to watch shows together and discuss them afterwards.
7.Limit the hours of viewing. The Australian Dept of Health & Ageing recommends limiting children’s total media time to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day – this includes all TV, videos, DVDs, Playstation, computer time etc. It recommends discouraging TV viewing for children under 2 and encouraging “interactive activities that promote proper brain development, such as talking, playing and reading together”.
Don’t have the TV on during meals. They are an important time to be social with your children. Particularly avoid the News during mealtimes if you have young children. The concept that the day’s horrors are unlikely to happen to them may be hard for them to grasp.


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