Television, Children and Obesity

Dr. Harvey Anderson may have found the perfect combination to engage teenage boys - free, all-you-can-eat pizza and their own televisions to watch the Simpsons while eating.

Dr. Harvey Anderson is a specialist in nutrition and he has been pursuing some small experimental studies to understand more about the problem of childhood obesity. One of Anderson's conclusions is that eating while watching television overrides our ability to know when to stop eating; in effect, mindless television watching produces mindless eating. Anderson has been alarmed by the rising rates of childhood obesity and wants to help address the problem by studying that which makes us feel full, so-called satiety factors. In the past year, he's published several papers on the subject to attempt to explain how these factors work in children. Leptin is a hormone that has already been fingered as being among the culprits, a kind of blame it on your genes, reason for the inability to control appetite. However, the high rates of childhood obesity bother Anderson and he is not convinced that genes provide the whole story. To understand the bigger picture, he's been looking at other factors such as one's environment (where one lives, daily routine, and so on) that, together with genes, are likely to provide a more balanced, realistic explanation of what's going on "Our food intake control system is actually very good and is not in disarray despite what one hears about the obesity epidemic," he says. Anderson decided to take a closer look at how television affects eating. "It was the first study done of its kind. People have looked at the influence of television before, but only in terms of how much television was watched during the day, not whether kids were eating while watching television and how much they ate." The children arrived 2 hours after breakfast at home, then, half of the group was given calorie-free sweetened water, while the other received sweetened water with glucose, a so-called caloric pre-load. Lunch was served 30 minutes later. Of these two groups, some ate while watching the Simpsons, while the others ate without the television on. Over the course of the experiment, the kids came back four times, each time being exposed to a different condition. The children who got an extra calorie bump prior to the meal and did not watch TV during the meal ate the least. But, among TV watchers, the extra calories seemed to have no effect on how much they ate. Overall, the kids who watched TV consumed an average of 228 extra calories at lunch. While this may not seem like much, the effect of these extra calories on a regular basis will add up. Anderson, based on his results, has some immediate advice for parents - turn the television off during mealtime. Anderson has, with support from CIHR, and working with then PhD candidate Dr. Nick Bellissimo, pursued other related research on satiety factors among children. Another recent study examined how well glucose and whey protein drinks suppressed appetite among obese and normal weight boys. It is well known that, at least among adults, proteins suppress appetite more strongly than glucose, but Anderson notes that the study produced "profoundly puzzling" results. For example, there was little reduction in appetite among obese boys who received the protein drink compared to normal weight boys. "So, why was this? It could be that body fat is having some effect on the protein. It could be that body fat is holding back or impeding the protein from helping suppress the appetite," he speculates. Anderson said. "I'm concerned about overweight kids and how they respond to a diet at a time when their body is driving them to eat to support growth."