Eating and watching television at the same time may pose a serious risk to human
health, a nutritionist has said.
Speaking in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Wednesday, Opeyemi Bolajoko, a
nutritionist and dietician with the Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo State, said
watching television while eating negatively impacts on the health as a lot of people
nibble, thus become unconscious of the amount of food being consumed while
inactive and which at the long run contributes to the rate of obesity in Nigeria.
Medical experts say Nigeria is facing an increasing prevalence of obesity, while
people living with hypertension and diabetes are adversely affected.
Mrs. Bolajoko however stated that eating while glued to the internet, either working
or streaming live contents on the social media, also has negative consequences on
health.
According to her, people spend a lot of time while eating and watching TV, working
on or watching the internet or cable TV thus will be prone to weight gain.
“They would be eating and would not really be conscious of what or the amount of
what they are eating. So they tend to eat more. That’s why many people while
eating, they eat more, and because they eat more, it can make them add weight
coupled with the fact that by the time they are eating, the time they spend
watching TV, they are not doing anything active, that is inactivity, which we call
sedentary lifestyle.
“That alone means the food that is even being eaten is not used. It would
invariably be stored in the body and that is one of the factors that have increased
the rate of obesity in the population because we discovered that these days, a lot
of people spend a lot of time on the internet and in watching television, so the
actual time spent on physical activities is quite reduced. And when you are eating,
and you are watching the internet or streaming something live on the internet, or
the cable TV and you spend a lot of time, and you eat as well, at the end of the
day, the person will definitely have the tendency to be fat, if that is habitual” she
said.
A study published in the JAMA Network Journals, found that televisions,
particularly those with action and sound, are bad for the waistline as viewers eat
more while watching action films than those watching an interview programme.
According to the researchers, viewing TV encourages sedentary lifestyle just like
other distracting activities such as reading, listening to radio and interacting with
companions during meals.
The study included 94 undergraduate students- 57 females with mean age nearly
20 years, who were gathered in groups to watch 20 minutes of TV and were
randomly assigned to one of three different programs. These included an action
film, an interview and a programme without sound.
It was discovered that viewers watching the more distracting programme with high
camera cuts and sound variation (action film), ate 98 percent more grams of food
and 65 percent more calories than those who watched the less distracting
programme- an interview.
“More distracting TV content appears to increase food consumption: action and
sound variation are bad for one’s diet. The more distracting a TV show, the less
attention people appear to pay to eating and the more they eat,” the researchers
stated in the journal.


https://m.premiumtimesng.com/arts-entertainment/167760-watching-tv-while-eating-bad-for-health-nutritionist.html

really never knew of such. Tnks @OP