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Study Shows TV Makes Kids Fat, Computers Don't
Xemu writes "Computers don't make children fat, but watching TV for the same length of time does. This is shown by a recent Swedish study of all school children in Lund's county conducted by RN Pernilla Garmy. The results were clear: The child's obesity was directly affected by placing a TV in the child's room, but placing a computer in the room had no effect at all. One theory is that it's common to have a snack in front of the TV, while a computer requires a more active user, for example when chatting or playing games."
Computers are awesome.
The article is likely correct about the snacks and food. Also, no offense intended to anyone, but I've noticed that people who just zone out to television as compared to active computer users/gamers tend to be a bit...dumber.
Yes yes, I know, a generalization...but in my experience, it's the truth.
Living With a Nerd
Abuse of apostrophe's make baby Je'su's cry.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yeah, because sitting there and typing or moving the mouse is huge amounts of activity! I can eat a bag of M&Ms and drink coke while coding, and I'm sure there are plenty who can scoff pizza, coke and crisps without a problem!
You've got to lick your fingers well to make sure that you don't leave a mess on your keyboard, but other than that the computer "activity" isn't that much of an obstacle for eating.
"Gaming your way to weightloss!"
It works, I swear! I remember one particular weekend where I lost 5lbs working through raid encounters in Everquest 1. Who needs food when lewt is raining from the sky!
Repeating as needed, may reduce weight as part of a calorie controlled diet.
While shoving a mouse around and typing does not seem like significant exercise, I think there's a bigger energy expenditure in interactive thought. Zoning out at the television does not engage many areas of the brain, but chatting with friends or deciding where to browse next takes a bit more power. Brain activity burns calories. I've personally noticed that my head warms up more when I'm thinking, especially if the work or play is cerebral or there's a time pressure involved. It would be very cool to see a study on just how different these tasks are, with brain activity monitored objectively.
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All the free porn is on the internet, that is a calorie burn when done properly.
I found that I get caught up in the computer and what I'm working on and forget to stop and eat. When I get really focused on my work I'll forget to stop and eat and when I'm playing a new game I may only eat once a day for the first weekend.
How many ads for fast food, soft drinks, candy bar, restaurants, etc. do you see during an hour of watching TV versus during an hour of using the computer? Food cues might play a strong role, too.
Previous studies showed that the TV made no difference at all. Kids who weren't active in the house, where no more active when they went outside.
The studies I have read based on TV obesity all showed that TV was not the cause, but just something people who were inactive happened to do.
Why the child was inactive turns out to be a number of other reasons. depression, stress, bad house hold habits. and so on.
What TV does seem to do is make people think they need to eat, vie food commercials.
Sadly, there are surprisingly few good* studies that try to tease apart the variables in TV watching. I would like to read the detail in this study.
How were the children selected? What where there daily activities before the study? Was the study done at a time of year that coincide with better weather? How where controls done? was diet monitored?
The reason given seems a little thin, since eating at the computer is as easy as the TV. OF course, there could be a cultural reason for not eating while on the computer.
Quite frankly, I would be for the removing of food commercials. It would never happen, but I would wager that after a year the obesity problem would start to slow down, if not stop.
*lots of bad studies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
directly affected by placing a TV in the child's room
Immediate mental image: the child's weight changing instantly as the TV comes and goes.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The fact that celery is a calorie negative food still doesn't make up for the fact that nutella is fat and sugar with chocolate and hazelnut flavor.
I dunno if it's worse than peanut butter, but healthy it isn't.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Agreed. It's not the tv making them fat. It's the fat that makes them fat.
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There is some scientific disagreement over the nature of fat accumulation (consider Gary Taubes landmark book Good Calories, Bad Calories), and I would think that this plays an important role in how the culture views the qualities of various foods. Furthermore, as has been mentioned in other posts, TV ads are designed to affect those who watch them. It is non-trivial to resist the sophisticated suggestions (see Boris Sidis' The Psychology of Suggestion 1898) that vulnerable people encounter in broadcast media.
Consuming more calories than you burn or apply to normal growth makes you fat!
100 kids surveyed:
How many kids have consumed a computer: 0
How many kids have consumed a television: 0
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.