TV Watching Linked to Childhood Obesity

Television watching is the lifestyle habit most associated with childhood obesity, according to the findings of a new study published in the journal Pediatric Obesity.

In this study, researchers used data from the INMA Environment and Childhood Project, a cohort which assessed the role of pollutants during pregnancy on children’s health, to evaluate 1,480 children starting at the age of four. They developed a child lifestyle score according to the sum of five lifestyle habits: physical activity; sleep time; television time; plant-based foods; and intake of ultra‐processed foods. After dividing these categories into tertiles, they calculated age‐ and sex‐specific z‐scores for BMI, waist circumference (WC), and blood pressure at ages four and even. At age four, they also calculated age‐, and sex‐, specific z‐scores for triglycerides and HDL.

According to the results of the study, the researchers observed that the lifestyle score was not correlated with the outcomes at four years ild, but it was negatively associated with BMI and WC z‐scores at age 7 years. They found that children at four-years-old in the highest tertile of the score had lower risk of overweight or obesity at seven-years-old (OR = 0.61; 95% CI 0.39 to 0.96), and abdominal obesity (OR=0.48; 95% CI 0.24 to 0.96).

“When children watch television, they see a huge number of advertisements for unhealthy food,” commented ISGlobal’s Dora Romaguera, co-leader of the study in a press release about the study. “This may encourage them to consume these products.” Ultra-processed foods, such as pastries, sweet beverages and refined-grain products, are high in sugar, salt and saturated fat and low in nutritional value. The study showed that high intake of these products at four years of age was associated with a higher BMI at seven years of age.

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“Identifying habits linked to overweight and obesity in the early stages of life can help us to define preventive strategies against other conditions, such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases during adulthood,” added Rowaedh A. Bawaked, researcher at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute and lead author of the study.

“The study concluded that adult health depends on the establishment of healthy lifestyle habits during childhood: limited television time, extracurricular physical activity, getting enough hours of sleep, eating lots of vegetables and avoiding ultra-processed foods.”

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"TV watching is the lifestyle habit most strongly associated with obesity in children" https://t.co/hRFkRQ257h #obesity #lifestyle @rbawakid: "Identifying habits linked to overweight and obesity in the early stages of life can help us to define preventive strategies…"

— Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) December 10, 2019