Recent findings are suggesting that
television viewing time is a risk factor for excessive weight gain among
adolescents.
Television isn’t the innocuous pastime many
assume it is, although a seemingly passive activity, it can stimulate many
pathways in the brain that real-life activity utilise. An example of this
phenomenon is found in sport, where athletes are advised by their coaches to
visualise the perfect execution of movements within and outside of training sessions.
Why? Because motor imagery (thinking about movement) and motor action
(performing actual movement) engage overlapping brain systems.(1) The act of
thinking about movement stimulates and reinforces the exact same neural
pathways that are used when the actual movement is performed. And television
works in a similar manner.
Television is primarily a visual context,
to which your eyes are the key conduit. The optic nerves that transmits
information from the retina to the brain, not only wraps around the
hypothalamus but also give off connections to the very areas that control your
neurotransmitters and hormones. As I’ve shown in previous articles the
hypothalamus is a key area for metabolism and especially hunger and thirst
regulation. The intensity, colours and shape of the light hitting your eyes
have numerous effects on your brain and the hormonal systems it controls. And
so research is unveiling.
Television is linked to two cognitive
functions that go part way to explaining the link between viewing exposure and
overweight. These two cognitive functions are called reward saliency and
inhibitory control. Television stimulates ‘wants’ (reward salience) and lessens
the ability to dampen down or stop a
particular activity or response (inhibitory control) to these ‘wants’.(2) And
because junk food is readily available in current society and strongly taps
into these reward pathways, that (junk) often becomes the focus of our hunting
and foraging expeditions into the deepest, darkest recesses of our kitchens. And
so again, the research is showing.
Recent studies are showing that increased television
viewing was associated with an increased intake of sugary drinks, energy dense
foods and trans fat consumption, with a concomitant decreased intake of fruit,
vegetable and fiber.(3, 4) Which is no surprise, since as I’ve shown in
previous articles, food manufacturers purposely create what is known as
hyper-palatability in certain lines of food to tap into these powerful
evolutionary drives.
This has an especially potent effect in
young children as they haven’t developed the mechanisms to detach themselves
from present stimuli as much as (some) adults, so are more at the mercy of
strong biological drives than the rest of us. Therefore with increased exposure
to television and its incentivising of ‘wants’, combined with a weakening of
the ability to resist these ‘wants’ in a child who is already undeveloped in
this regard, and the ‘super-charging’ of food to reward the consumer, you have
a perfect storm for excessive eating.
The storm however, can be weathered, it
just requires a first rate skipper to guide the vessel. And ‘Mon Capitan’, that
is where you come in…
As adults I believe we should take
responsibility for our children until such a stage where we have helped them
develop their own ability to control their own drives. I’m not telling you what
to do; I’m just presenting the information and possible solutions. What you do
with that information is entirely, and to paraphrase Bobby Brown, your
‘prerogative’.
References:
1- Baeck JS et al. (2012) Brain activation
patterns of motor imagery reflect plastic changes associated with intensive
shooting training. Behav Brain Res: Sep 1;234(1):26-32.
2- Chapman CD et al. (2012) Lifestyle
determinants of the drive to eat: a meta-analysis. Am J Clin Nutr.
Sep;96(3):492-7.
3- Miller SA et al. (2008) Association
between television viewing and poor diet quality in young children. Int J
Pediatr Obes.;3(3):168-76.
4- Ford C et al. (2012) Television viewing
associated with adverse dietary outcomes in children ages 2-6. Obes Rev.
Dec;13(12):1139-47. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01028.x.
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