Another Reason To Limit TV Viewing - The Health Of Your Children

It would now appear that there is yet another advantage to limiting television consumption. We've found studies suggesting that less tv leads to: a longer life, up to 9 additional years of spare time by the time you're 65, and a safer home. Now a study has come out linking limited tv watching to lower rates of childhood obesity.

In a study of 8,550 4 year old children, there were three activities strongly linked with lower rates of childhood obesity among the participants: eating an evening meal as a family 5 nights a week, getting at least 10.5 hours of sleep, and watching less than 2 hours of television per day.

The rate of childhood obesity associated with children who participated in all three of these lifestyles was 14.3%, but nearly doubled in children who experienced none of them (ie, the rate of obesity among preschoolers who ate less than 5 meals together as a family AND slept less than 10.5 hours per night AND watched more than 2 hours of tv per day was nearly 25%).

"These findings held true even when the researchers controlled for factors that may affect a child's risk of obesity, including maternal obesity, race, gender, socioeconomic status and living in a single-parent household."

"Helmcamp said it can be hard to institute some of these behaviors. But she suggested that parents 'make these behaviors a priority. Sit down and figure out how you can make it happen. Maybe your child doesn't need to be involved in four or five different activities.'"

"She said if it's tough to eat together five times a week, shoot for at least three nights a week. And, she also recommended removing TVs from children's bedrooms, which can help with limiting screen time and with getting enough sleep."

Have a great weekend. Watch less tv.

By the way, the link to the article is here:
http://health.yahoo.com/news/healthday/3homehabitshelpyoungstersstayslim.html