Watching TV + Eating Food = Bad Combination?

When I was little, my dad and I used to eat dinner while watching the news on tv. While this did keep me up on current events, I know I paid a lot less attention to what was on my plate. So in this blog post I will address the question: is it unhealthy to eat while watching television?

Researchers at Cornell University studied this issue by having 94 undergraduates snack on various treats while watching 20 minutes of television. This study specifically focused on food consumption based on television content. They had one third of the participants watch a piece of an action movie, one third watch a talk show, and the other third watch the same action movie segment but without sound. The results showed that those who watched the action movie, with and without sound, ate 98% more than those who watched the talk show. The conclusion was that people who watch more distracting content on television consumed more calories.

I like this study because it has a clear control group. However, I feel like the time of day also should have been recorded. If the study was done around a meal time, it’s possible that the participants would have eaten more in front of the television, regardless of what was being viewed. I’m also curious to if gender played a role in the statistics. Were all of the undergrads male? Female? I know the majority of my male friends consume more food than my female friends do. So I decided to look further.

A study published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition argues that watching television does not necessarily lead to obesity, but television viewing while eating does effect the amount of food consumed. The researchers argued that when someone is watching television, they aren’t paying attention to food cues. Food cues are signals sent from the sensory, the neuronal, and the digestive system. This study focuses more on numbers from data and includes factors like BMI. Body Mass Index factors in height and weight to calculate body fat.

In conclusion, these studies both enforce the notion that eating food while watching television can lead to overeating since the body’s sensors are distracted. I’m not convinced that obesity necessarily stems from television viewing, but for now I will be eating my meals away from the tv.

Dinner-setting-with-remote-control

5 thoughts on “Watching TV + Eating Food = Bad Combination?

  1. Kevin Taylor

    Back at home I ate the majority of my meals while watching television and I can see how it would cause some to overeat. I don’t really think that I eat more when watching television compared to when I’m not, but I do believe that some people do. I wouldn’t go as far to say that watching television and eating could be a cause of obesity.

  2. Julia Hall

    This blog was really well written because you offered your opinion on the blog. Especially now in college, I tend to eat and watch TV at the same time. I always notice that I end up eating half the bag of potato chips or pretty much the whole carton of ice cream because I am not paying attention. I slightly disagree with your statement about how watching TV and eating doesnt cause obesity. I think that those who are over weight and are obese are the ones that watch TV and eat the most. Considering that the combination of the two causes overeating it would make sense that it could lead to obesity because now a days people spend hours in front of the TV so that could also mean hours of eating too.

  3. zsw5031

    It’s very brave of you to vow not to eat anymore of your meals while watching TV. I on the other hand, can not commit myself to that task. I prefer to watch TV while eating meals. It is too boring to just sit there and eat especially if you are eating by yourself. I liked how you argued the points that the data you researched made. It would of been very helpful to know whether the study conducted was done by all males or all females or a mixed group. Because in my experience, males do tend to eat more than females. The time of day also would have made a huge impact on the experiment. People are hungry at different times of the day so not disclosing the time in which meals were ate during the experiment seems like a flaw to say the least. All in all it was a very interesting topic and I wish you good luck in the task to separate TV and meals.

  4. Brooke Rachel Fleischhacker

    Very interesting blog, and I’m definitely guilty of eating meals while watching TV, but I have never really thought of the negative affects. If I’m eating dinner in my room, it’s just become a habit to me to throw on some Netflix and just relax. But not that I think about it, I really do have no idea how much I consume in that time, because I don’t pay attention. Your questions about the study are great and there could definitely be other factors to this theory.

  5. Stephanie Michelle Friedman

    I really like how you found flaws in the study and questioned it. I agree with you’re questioning of what time in the day it was and what was the gender of the participant? I think for a study to be accurate it has to be from a random sample and then randomly assigned into the study group just as Andrew has mentioned before. As for your blog I feel like people don’t pay attention to their hand going into the bag of chips or whatever snack it is into their mouths because they are distracted by what is happening on the screen. I can admit to it, so it is definitely something that is relevant. I probably should quit that habit especially after reading this.

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