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 How much TV do your kids watch? Based on that number, you can accurately predict if they'll be fat adults.Researchers at New Zealand's University of Otago have found a direct correlation between the number of hours children and young teens watch television and the likelihood they'll be overweight or obese by age 26. Kids who are couch potatoes are likely to become obese or overweight adults. While this isn't the first study to link television with weight gain in children, it is the first to find that TV can be a better predictor of obesity than even diet or physical activity. The study: One thousand children, all of whom were between the ages of 5 and 15 and were born between April 1972 and March 1973, participated in the study. They were questioned about their television watching at the ages of 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15. The results: Over 40 percent of obese 26-year-olds watched the most television when they were children, say the researchers. The number of hours they spent in front of the TV correlated almost exactly to their body mass index. That is, the kids who watched the most TV also had the highest BMIs. These kids were also more likely to grow up to smoke and have high cholesterol. The takeaway: If you want to reduce your child's chances of becoming obese, you should restrict their viewing time to no more than 2 hours a day, say the researchers. The study findings were published in the International Journal of Obesity. | ||||||||||||||||
