July 15, 2004 -- Kids watching lots of TV t
July 15, 2004 -- Kids watching lots of TV this summer? It's programming them for a lifetime of health problems, a new study shows.
A study in this week's issue of The Lancet shows that when children and teens watch more than two hours of TV daily, by age 21 they will likely be obese smokers with heart problems.
The TV-and-junk food pattern has "long-lasting detrimental effects," writes lead researcher Robert J. Hancox, MD, with the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
These kids get less physical activity and eat too much junk food -- accounting for so many obese children today, writes Hancox. Their cholesterol levels get too high, and too many take up smoking, even if their parents don't smoke.
His is the first study to examine the long-term effects of this lifestyle.
In his study, Hancox and his colleagues focused on nearly 1,000 randomly selected children born from 1972 to 1973 and tracked their TV viewing at regular intervals until they reached age 26. They asked parents and the children (at ages 13 and 15) to report their viewing habits.
Researchers found:
- Those who watched the most TV between ages 5 and 15 were more likely to be overweight, have heart and respiratory problems, have higher cholesterol, and smoke at age 21.
- 61% of those in the study watched TV more than two hours every weekday between ages 5 and 15.
- By the time they were 26, 17% of cases of overweight, 15% of cases of elevated cholesterol and 17% of cases of smoking was attributable to watching more than two hours of TV during childhood and adolescence.
- Even those kids whose parents didn't smoke ended up smoking.
His data indicate that TV viewing habits established in childhood will continue into adult years, writes Hancox. "This is itself is cause for concern."
"Parents must reclaim from television the responsibility for educating and entertaining their young children," even though the parents work long hours, don't have access to good day care, and often live in unsafe neighborhoods, writes David Ludwig, MD, with Harvard Medical School, in an accompanying commentary.
Food advertising aimed at children should be banned to help cut the numbers of obese children, Ludwig adds. "The commercial food industry has no business telling toddlers to consume fast food, soft drinks, and high-calorie low-quality snacks," he writes.
