Feature Story

March 3, 2008

Cutting Screen Time May Help Reduce Overweight Children's BMI

From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:

Using a monitoring device to reduce television viewing and computer use time by 50 percent over a two-year period appears to reduce calorie intake, sedentary behavior and body mass index in overweight children age 4 to 7, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Viewing cartoons with embedded food commercials can increase choice of the advertised item in preschoolers, and television commercials may prompt eating.

Study staff reduced these children's weekly screen time allotment by 10 percent per week until a 50 percent reduction was reached.

By the end of the study, children with no time limits reduced their TV and computer use by an average of 5.2 hours per week, compared with an average reduction of 17.5 hours per week among children whose time was restricted.

BMI as adjusted for age and sex and calorie intake also were lower among the group with restrictions on viewing than among the control group.

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