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Video Game Playing Increases Food Intake In Teens
An anonymous reader writes "There have been plenty of anecdotal associations between gaming and obesity. Now Canadian and Danish researchers have tested the hypothesis that video game playing leads to increased spontaneous food intake; a true test of causation vs. correlation. Their conclusion? 'A single session of video game play in healthy male adolescents is associated with an increased food intake, regardless of appetite sensations (abstract).'"
is that when I was young I didn't eat anything and had my parents yelling at me to eat something while playing.
We've been conditioned by video games to run around avoiding ghosts, listening to techno, eating large quantities of fruit. :V
If they need some comfort food -- aka, they just got dominated by me in the game -- they should be taking something healthy. My semen, for example.
It happens at amusement parks, during sporting events, etc. It may not be universal across all forms of entertainment, but it is across many. Sports bars are a more egregious contributor to obesity than computer gaming is ever likely to be.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
Play Civ 4 or 5, and you'll FUCKING FORGET TO EAT!
I consider myself a gamer, and I don't even know what you mean. What is the difference between video gaming with and without scare quotes?
At any rate, their finding was that once you finish gaming, you eat more. As in, if Bob spends some hours gaming, and Dave spends those same hours reading, and then they both go get lunch, Bob will eat substantially more than Dave, all other things being equal. (And yes, they accounted for the marginally higher number of calories burned by gaming as compared to resting -- the difference is only 20 Calories/hour, before you go trying to plan an exercise regimen around it.)
My guess? Playing a game tricks your brain into thinking you're being more active than you are, and so afterwards your brain subconsciously instructs you to eat additional calories to make up for that activity. If I go jog a mile around town, I'll eat more afterwards. If I "jog" a mile around Azeroth, my brain will still tell me to eat more, even though I don't need to.
Of course, my theory is predicated on these results being from an action game (which may not be the case; the full text of the article is behind a paywall). If they were playing Civ5, then I have no idea why they'd be more hungry afterwards.
Sample size of 22 is only meaningless if you know nothing about statistical analysis. Say I have 22 people and 12 of them got fatter then the article is meaningless since you're outside your confidence interval (google those words before your next post). But if all 22 people got fat then it's perfectly reasonable sample size to conclude the sample is representative of the population. Just an example, the statistical analysis is in the study which I'm sure you didn't bother digging up to read before slagging.
Any doctor who rejects an study that is significant to P values of 0.05 because of a sample size is an idiot who also needs to take a statistics course.
I don't really know what your problem with the sample size is. Here's the relevant part of the statistical discussion from the paper:
The power calculation analysis showed that data from 22 subjects gave us a power (1 - beta) of 0.9, which was sufficient to show changes in energy intake as low as 5%, with an a of 0.05 (repeated-measures analysis of variance; ANOVA). Before the statistical analysis was conducted, all data were tested for normality by using the Shapiro-Wilk W test and variance homogeneity. A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted on the means of all variables. Analyses of glucose and hormonal data were based on repeated-measures ANOVA, including the factors “condition” (video game playing compared with resting) and “time” (7 time points). Pairwise comparisons of single time point values were performed by using a paired Student’s t test. Correlation analyses were used to explore the relation between ad libitum energy intake and different variables. Effect sizes were examined by using Cohen’s d method, reflecting the magnitude of the difference between groups in SD units.
So it looks to me as though 22 is sufficient for the power required here. If you've got a specific problem with the statistical techniques employed, could you walk me through it please? I am a scientist who uses statistics rather than a full-time statistician, so I accept that I might have missed something here.
...it can't be related to the general population.
They're fairly upfront about the fact that the test subjects were all teenage males. Obviously, yes, you'd want to replicate it with other sex and age groups, but you have to start somewhere.
The game was FIFA 09, which is consistent with your theory -- personally I find football exhausting. Would be interesting to compare with a more sedentary-themed game; they don't consider this aspect, and just selected FIFA 09 because "the game is easy to learn, is popular, and can be played in 1 h".
IOW, "The facts don't fit my preferences for the way the world should work, and therefore the facts must be ignored."
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
They did blood tests to monitor hormones and no increase in appetite inducing hormones was seen. Additionally participants didn't report being hungrier. This would imply that the brain is not actually signalling for higher caloric intake. However they comment that they did not check for satiation signals or stress-reward signals. They suggest that the 'mental stress' caused by playing the games is the cause. This stress should be the same regardless of the type of game played. They have seen similar increases in other studies with mentally strenuous activities such as arithmetic.