Here we go again, folks. Another study subsidized by federal grant money, taking time and man hours to report something that has already been documented repeatedly and was obvious to anyone citizen or researcher growing up since the 1950s. Another study reinventing the wheel. Another study reporting results of research on factors and behaviors which cause people to eat more and gain weight, including, ta da! - watching TV. That's correct, folks, watching large amounts of TV is positively correlated with gaining large amounts of weight. Wow! Who knew?
Well, just about anybody eating at a fast food franchise. Knowing and caring, of course, are two different kettles of fish...or flank steak.
"The study under discussion, led by researchers at the US National Institutes of Health, Yale University and the California Pacific Medical Centre, analyzed 173 studies done since 1980 (this is called a ‘meta-analysis) about the effects of media consumption on children. The researchers wanted to see how media exposure influenced children's health as regards such actions as tobacco use, early onset of sexual behavior, childhood obesity, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, academic under-performance, drug use and alcohol use." What, no cancer, hemorrhoids, or acne?
But wait! There's more! In fact, the study shows it's not just watching TV that causes all sorts of health and behavioral problems but high amounts of video game playing, listening to music, hours spent on the computer; basically doing modern media; they call this videophilia, i.e., spending increasing amounts of the time watching movies or playing videogames and, I guess, massaging any mobile video appliance, like smartphones.
Past studies have shown that mindless, mechanical consumption of convenience foods, snack foods, buttery, salty, crunchy, crispy foods, when watching TV or movies causes serious weight gain. Watch and eat. Watch and eat. Passivity and poundage. Working on the Internet, is less passive more interactive and it promotes less automatic eating because you're typing or mousing or tabbing. Same with offline videogames. Interactive vs. non-interactive is a crucial factor. Actually, any visual-motor or visual-cognitive activity which distracts from eating is a valuable deterrent to obesity.
Seriously, when watching a foreign movie with subtitles, ever try to eat a dinner where you have to use knives and forks and napkins? Hard to do. You put your head down. You avert your eyes. You miss the subtitles. Ever try to watch a complex film like Memento or The Usual Suspects while eating a real (non-fast-food) meal? Again, you can't because if you look down to cut or fork apiece of pot roast you may miss a fast scene or a critical look or gesture; then, you're one step behind the rest of the scene or sequence or even the entire film. Annoying.
That, by the way, is why simple plots and narratives are preferred when scarfing food because they allow you to look away to cut a piece of meat or a piece of egg plant (for my vegan readers) and not miss anything crucial to understanding plot development.
The need to eat! Maybe THAT'S why Americans don't like to watch subtitled movies any more. They interfere with eating.
The '50's and Madison Ave
Anyone, like this writer, who grew up in the 50s, knows that when TV came into the home, so did heavier eating. Outdoor exercise? Kicked out of the back door or into the coal bin. But it wasn't just TV. TV joined the hallelujah chorus of time-saving, energy-saving devices that studded the wonderful world of GE during the Eisenhower years. Selling modernity and freedom from the drudgery of housework and exertion made Madison Avenue the place where habits were designed and life styles were marketed. Convenience, not health, was the buzz words on The Ave.
Home versions of dishwashers, freezers with gallons of ice cream, clothes washers and driers, remote controls for every electrical appliance from music systems to lamp dimmers, vacuum cleaners, large and small, Lay-Z-Boy chairs, maids, take-out food, the list is endless, all were hawked by Mad Ave and all touted reduced human energy expenditure. Life was good.
All sorts of products made food easier to acquire and eat, and carb-loaded products included ingredients which made food fun, tasty, crisp, and luxurious to the tongue -- a sucker for fat tastes if there ever was one. Over the decades all these convenience foods have synergistically made us people of the palate-if it tastes good, do it!
Children in the TV-dominated 50s saw their parents pull back from their basement hobbies and crafts and increasingly spend their free hours in front of the television. All those calories now stayed "unspent." Sedating and sedentary-enabling appliances and technologies were (and are) like Dracula: you invited them into your home and they sucked the blood of your physical activities until you went from a teenage jock to a teen age slacker and your parents devolved from fire- and tool- makers into couch potatoes.
Years ago, studies showed that, among other negative social effects caused or related to the introduction of television into a community, athletic participation went down and older people went out less (widening the generation gaps) because it was easier to stay home, stay comfy, and socialize with people on TV rather than go through the effort to take a shower, get dressed, go down town and socialize with those at the church social or at the Kiwanis hall, many of whom bored you to tears.
America saw the rise of convenience foods and frozen meals (then called TV Dinners) displace home cooking. Today this trend is ever more extreme as we've seen even less cooking (or, let's be real, less reheating) and a gusher-rise in take-out convenience foods. Mad Ave supports this in grand abundance. They propagandize us. They indoctrinate us. They socialize us. TV commercials tell us that loving parents don't actually cook, they bring home the KFC, do take-out, or order in. Tasty, taste bud seducing, fatty foods. Hey, you don't need media to cultivate those fat cells and metabolic set points. Just have Ronald McD. and the Colonel visiting your home every day.
Most studies like those covered in this latest, meta-analytic research (a type of research where you survey previous research and find commonalities and trends that provide more stable results with more diverse subject populations and representative samples than just looking at the results of one or several studies) seems to imply that people over 30 are not worth covering. Children and teens; they're the target groups. Mistake! Adults are people too. Do not adults bleed? Do not adults have feelings? Do not the same results apply to them? Yes they do. What's worse, their metabolism is slower. And, let's be honest here, adults are the entertainment gatekeepers and role models for their children.
Even if, as recent research continues to show, TV watching has gone down and videogame playing and internet hours have gone up (cognitively good), interacting with a computer is still a sedentary activity. Your brain may be working overtime but your muscles and your butt are just "kickin' it."
So, why do these studies continue to replicate themselves? Why do these studies continue to single out media as the leading culprit? Is it the easiest target? Isn't there are larger picture than media? Wasn't that picture a major theme in the movie, WALL-E? The fact is, our entire American life style makes us fatter, lazier, sicklier, and more diabetes prone. For instance, studies show that slim Asians immigrate to America and what do they do? They get fatter.
What's going on in academia that they keep re-inventing the wheel when it comes to media effects and bugaboos?
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