Children consume nearly as many calories as are in a packet of crisps with every hour they spend watching television, according to US research.
Watching TV also encourages children to eat more junk foods, particularly soft drinks and takeaway fast food, the researchers found.
The study is the first to demonstrate that watching television directly influences intake of calories. Its main author, Jean Wiecha, said the survey showed that excessive TV viewing was in itself a health risk.
"The food industry spends billions of dollars on advertising because they know it is effective," she told Guardian Unlimited.
"They talk about fighting for your child's dollars, and the result is additional food going in your child's mouth. The intensity of the viewing looks like it's really driving up intake of the foods being advertised."
The study followed 550 children aged 11 to 13 over a period of 20 months. For each hour they spent watching television, their food intake was found at the end of the period to have increased by 167 calories a day. (A packet of crisps contains around 180 calories, while a can of Coke has 140).
Figures from the communications regulator, Ofcom, show that British children watch 10,000 TV commercials every year, including nearly 3,000 ads for soft drinks, foods and fast food chains.
Ofcom found that British advertisers spend £522m a year on commercials targeted specifically at children, who watch commercial TV for 588 hours each year - the equivalent of 24 days.
Numerous scientific studies have shown that children who watch more TV have a higher calorie intake, but advertisers argue that this is a result of their more sofa-bound lifestyle rather than of the adverts they are watching.
Dr Wiecha, however, said her work contradicted this. "Although children and youth are encouraged to watch what they eat, many youth seem to eat what they watch," the report's authors wrote.
"We've shown that as kids watch more television, they eat fewer fruits and vegetables. Television viewing influences children's diets."
The Guardian reported last week that government manifesto plans to restrict children's food advertising had been watered down after sustained lobbying of Ofcom by advertisers and broadcasters.
TV commercials aimed at children younger than 12 have been banned in Sweden and Quebec, and similar restrictions apply in Belgium, Denmark and Greece.
But a range of proposals Ofcom published last month failed to recommend any restrictions on food advertising to children older than nine, and campaigners said the restrictions for younger children were minimal.
Dr Wiecha's report was published in this month's issue of the medical journal the Archives of Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
A study in the same issue found that children exposed to more than two hours of television per day were more likely to be overweight than those who were not.
Source:http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/4-25-2006-94440.asp
Rubbish, reply vegetarians - led by Paul McCartney. Some say meat is murder, while others dismiss a meal without animal products as rabbit food. Now a leading US nutritionist has given both sides something to chew on with a claim that parents who refuse to feed children meat are acting unethically.
Some say meat is murder, while others dismiss a meal without animal products as rabbit food. Now a leading US nutritionist has given both sides something to chew on with a claim that parents who refuse to feed children meat are acting unethically.
Professor Lindsay Allen of the University of California said that to deny growing children animal products during the critical first few years of life could cause permanent damage.
She said foods made from meat contain some nutrients not found anywhere else and are hard to replace in the diet of vulnerable groups.
"If you're talking about feeding young children and pregnant women and lactating women I would go as far as to say it is unethical to withhold these foods during that period of life," she said. "There's a lot of empirical research that will show the very adverse effects on child development of doing that."
She was especially critical of parents who imposed a vegan lifestyle on their children, which denied them milk, cheese and butter as well as meat. "There's absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans," she told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington. There are an estimated 250,000 vegans and up to 4m vegetarians in the UK, but there are no figures on how many children are brought up on such diets.
Prof Allen made the claims after her research showed that adding just two spoonfuls of meat to the daily diet of poverty-stricken children in Africa transformed them physically and mentally. Over two years the children almost doubled their muscle development, and showed dramatic improvements in mental skills. They also became more active, talkative and playful at school.
"Meat provides a concentrated source of essential micronutrients such as zinc, vitamin B12, calcium, iron and vitamin A, which cannot easily be obtained solely from plant foods," she told the conference.
Studies of vegetarians in both the United States and Europe have shown that missing out on meat and dairy products can permanently impair a child's development. Researchers in Holland found that by the time children were 16 years old it was too late to help them by re-introducing meat and milk into their diets. They remained impaired.
Prof Allen accepted that adults could avoid animal foods if they took the right supplements, but said the risks were too great for developing children.
The African study involved 544 children in Kenya, typically aged about seven, whose diet chiefly consists of starchy, low-nutrition corn and bean staples lacking these micronutrients. Over a period of two years, one group of the children was given a daily supplement of two ounces of meat. Two other groups received a cup of milk a day or an oil supplement containing the same amount of energy. A fourth group ate their normal diet.
"The group that received the meat supplement showed the biggest improvement in fluid intelligence over the two years, and those who had either milk or energy supplements were better than the controls. The group that received the meat supplements were more active in the playground, more talkative and playful, and showed more leadership skills," she said.
Other nutritionists questioned how relevant the results were to the developed world. "This study was conducted in a very different environment so it's difficult to apply the findings to the UK because they're talking about malnourished children," said Nilani Sritharan of the Medical Research Council's human nutrition unit in Cambridge.
"I wouldn't say [a vegan diet for children] is unethical. I would say if someone is giving their child a vegan diet they need to be given a lot of guidance and you would need to monitor the child quite carefully."
She said the danger areas are the energy and iron content in the diet of vegan children, who also need supplements of vitamin B12, which is missing altogether.
Alex Bourke, chair of the Vegan Society, dismissed Prof Allen's remarks as "propaganda" for the US meat and dairy industries. Prof Allen is director of a research center run by the US Agricultural Research Service, part of the Department of Agriculture.
He said: "This is a very unfair comparison. You do need to eat a healthy, balanced vegan diet as with any other system. These African villages were subsisting on corn and beans - that is not a balanced diet." Vegan parents must also give their children leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds, he said.
Sir Paul McCartney, whose first wife Linda put her name to a meat-free range of food, telephoned the BBC yesterday to dismiss Prof Allen's claims as "rubbish". He told the BBC Radio 2 Jeremy Vine Show that he had been a vegetarian for 20 years and raised his children the same with no ill-effects. "I really do think this is rubbish. I suspect these things are engineered by livestock people who have seen sales fall off. It has been a good thing for me and my children who are no shorter than other children."
Source:http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/2-21-2005-66084.asp
A pioneering Australian study will try to determine whether electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones can be harmful to children.
The three-year study, starting this week, will measure the effects on 300 Melbourne children, aged 12 and 13. The Australian Center for Radio frequency Bio effects Research will monitor their hearing, memory, sleep, concentration and blood pressure at regular intervals.
Children are thought to be at greater risk than adults to mobile phone radiation as their nervous systems are still developing and they absorb more energy though their heads.
source:http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-20-2005-81905.asp
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