Kiwi study links obesity in kids to TV

‘‘Hours of television viewing has been shown to have a clinical correlation to obesity—potentially more so than diet and exercise,’’ says the study by two New Zealand researchers published in British periodical, International Journal of Obesity.

Dr Anoop Misra, Professor of Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), says the finding is of ‘‘ominous significance’’ as it is reflective of a problem increasingly seen in India.

The study shows that there was a stronger association in girls between TV watching and obesity than boys, but does not explain what the reasons of this gender difference could be.

Says Dr Peeyush Jain, head, Preventive Cardiology Department, Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, ‘‘There can be no doubt that watching TV for long hours is deleterious for health.’’

According to WHO, obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults overweight, and is a major contributor to chronic disease and disability—an estimated 22 million children under five are overweight worldwide.

Robert Hancox and Richie Poulton of the University of Otago, New Zealand, recorded TV viewing habits, Body Mass Index (BMI) and the socio-economic status of the family of 1,037 children every two years from the ages of 3 to 15 years old. This continuous monitoring of the same group of children allowed them to determine if there was a clinically significant relationship between BMI and television viewing.

The results suggest that time spent on watching TV appears to a better predictor of BMI than either dietary intake or physical activity, say the authors. The findings from this study offer a greater insight into obesity’s cause, outside of the traditional understanding of eating too much and exercising too little.