TV Dinners
summery
Can TV make your child fat?
Statistics show that the risk of adult obesity increases by 7% for every additional hour of weekend television watched by 5 year olds. It was originally thought that TV led to a more sedentary lifestyle but there is no conclusive evidence to support this so what’s going on?
"Rosie ate 3 more pieces of pizza when watching TV"
Eleven year old Rosie is active but still slightly overweight. We gave Rosie her favourite food, pizza, on two different evenings, one sitting in front of the television and the other sitting at the table. Rosie ate 3 more pieces of pizza when watching TV which, if she ate pizza every day, would be a whole extra 118 pizzas a year or 81900 calories. Why? It could be that when your brain is distracted by television it ignores your internal satiety signals.
How you eat is as important as what you eat so eat at a dinner table with the television switched off.
Take a look at our Takeaway Tips on how to feed your kids
