Eating While Watching TV
You must have often heard elders say that you should not eat while sitting in front of the TV, as it robs you of blessings.
But despite this, eating in front of the TV is a daily occurrence for many people, whether they are sports enthusiasts or young children whose parents take away their mobile phones and turn on the TV for them.
But if you are eating a healthy, high-protein diet while sitting in front of the TV, will its nutritional value be reduced simply because you are sitting in front of the TV?
The Connection Between TV Habits and Diet Choices
According to new research, sitting in front of the TV and eating on a daily basis is not good for your health, no matter how good the food you are eating.
There are several studies that show a link between TV viewing and the risk of obesity. This is largely due to the fact that people who are used to sitting for long periods are less likely to exercise. However, watching TV also affects how much we eat.
Dr. Monique Alblas, an assistant professor of communication science at the University of Amsterdam, says we eat more while watching TV because our attention is diverted.
This may be because when we become so absorbed in the plot of a drama or movie, our attention is diverted from eating and we don’t pay attention to our body’s signals that tell us that our stomach is full.
Another study has revealed that when we eat in front of the TV, we don’t remember what and how much we have eaten, and because of this, we often eat more than we are hungry for.
Insights from Research on Eating and TV Viewing
They used data already available at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research for their research. When collecting this data, people were asked to record everything they did in a diary for a week, including eating and watching TV. They were also asked to write down what kind of programs they were watching on TV.
When Al-Ablas analyzed this data, he found that when people eat while watching TV, they spend more time eating. They compared the time spent eating while watching TV with the days when people were eating without a TV and found that people spent more time eating while watching TV.
She says this proves that people are so engrossed in watching TV that they don’t realize how much they are eating. Since people recorded these results themselves, it is clear that if they were too engrossed in watching a TV program, it is quite possible that they did not even remember how long they had been eating.
“Lab Research shows that when you’re not focused on your food, you tend to eat more. This means that watching TV while eating can distract you, making it harder to pay attention to how much you’re actually eating.”
Another reason why we eat more while watching TV is that when we eat mindfully, we don’t taste the food the same way we do when we’re watching TV.
This is because we don’t get as much satisfaction from eating when we’re engaged in a task, says Fleur van Meer, a data science researcher at Wageningen Food Safety Research in the Netherlands.
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The Brain’s Role in Mindless Eating
As a neuroscientist, Van Meer has made numerous observations about the activities that occur in the human brain while eating while engaged in a task. In one study, when participants were asked to recall a short or long number while eating, those who tried to recall the long number reported that they found the food less sweet.
During this time, Van Meer found less activity in the parts of their brains that are associated with the perception of taste. She says that if you don’t get the taste of food that you’re looking for, you may not be satisfied and therefore may soon crave something else.
However, there is another side to this. Van Meer says that if children don’t like vegetables, they can be fed vegetables while watching TV. They say that it is part of human psychology that they try to find a certain enjoyment in every activity and when they don’t get that enjoyment from something, they look for it elsewhere.
Research has found that when we are watching something that makes us feel happy or sad, we choose foods that make us feel less pleasurable, such as popcorn.
What do People Like to Eat While Watching TV?
Research has found that food advertisements generally encourage people to eat more. But what’s most troubling to researchers is the link between food advertising and ultra-processed foods, which are often linked to obesity and a host of other diseases, including heart disease.
Fernanda Hauber, a researcher at the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health at the University of Sao Paulo, says there is evidence that children are more likely to choose foods that they see advertised. Repeated exposure to these ads reinforces their tendency to prefer the foods shown in the ads.
He said that research has found that children prefer to eat ultra-processed foods while watching TV. She says part of the reason for this is that ultra-processed foods often seem easier to eat while watching TV.
However, the increased exposure to advertisements for this type of food is also linked to its increased consumption. Children who are already obese are more affected by these advertisements because they are already more sensitive to food advertisements.
Hauber says that when families sit down to eat together, the diet is usually higher in fruits and vegetables. However, her research has shown that children eat more ultra-processed foods when they eat with the family while watching TV.
“Eating with family is more beneficial than eating in front of the TV.”
Do People Eat Less Because They Are Distracted?
Van Meer says research shows that being distracted can make people tend to eat less or not at all. She gives the example of some primary schools in the Netherlands, where it was decided to shorten school hours and allow students to eat lunch during class.
Van Meer says that teaching during lunch tended to be more passive, with teachers either reading to students or showing educational videos. However, many parents noticed that their children were bringing home their full lunch boxes, which made it clear that they were more engaged in other activities during the meal.
A similar effect has been found in research with adults. In one study, participants were shown two episodes of the American drama Friends. One group was shown the same episode twice, while the other group was shown two different episodes. In the second episode, both groups were given snacks.
The researchers noticed that people who watched the same episode twice ate 211 more calories than those who watched two different episodes. Dick Stevenson, a professor of psychological sciences at Macquarie University in Australia, says this may be because they were less engaged.
In other words, if people are distracted by TV while eating, they may forget about the food in front of them. But when TV makes us feel bored, people eat more.
In another small study, participants were divided into three groups. One group was shown a ‘boring’ lecture about art on TV, another was shown an engaging TV series, and the third was shown nothing. All of these groups were offered low-calorie grapes and high-calorie chocolate.
The researchers found that participants who watched boring art lectures tended to eat more overall, while those who watched drama series on TV ate the least, meaning they ate the more they were bored.
However, interestingly, the only difference was in the number of grapes they ate, while the amount of chocolate was almost the same.
Should We Avoid Eating While Watching TV?
There are many theories about why we eat more when we eat in front of the TV, but reliable research in this area faces several challenges.
The participants whose data Al-Ablas used in his study were recording all the activities that took place in their daily lives, so it is possible that they did not pay much attention to their food and TV viewing records.
Many researchers also study people eating and watching TV in the lab. But watching TV essentially means you’re relaxing in your own home, so it can be difficult to replicate such conditions in the lab.
Hauber says that direct observation during a lab study can lead to changes in participants’ behaviors because they know they are being observed and modify their eating habits. On the other hand, Al-Ablas says that more research is needed in real life because our eating behaviors and the factors that influence them are very complex.
“We know about some of the factors that influence how much TV we eat, but there are still many things that need to be better understood,” Stevenson says how much TV affects how much we eat depends on many factors, including what type of content we’re watching.
According to them, TV can not only change our mood but also affect us in subconscious ways. For example, if a character on the screen is eating, it can make us want to eat too. In addition, the pace of the program on TV can also make a difference. According to one study, we eat more while watching action movies than interview shows.
How tasty the food we have also makes a difference in the amount of food we eat. How distracted we are while watching TV is also a complex issue. Often, watching TV does not distract us as much as other activities done during meals.
Observations from various studies have shown that there is little evidence that we eat more while watching TV than during other activities such as reading, playing video games, or eating with friends.
Research shows that our eating habits are complex and it is almost impossible to say anything definitive about them. A ‘TV dinner’ represents more than just a meal full of processed ingredients, high in fat and salt.
So if you’re sitting down to eat some healthy food, you need to think about whether you really want to watch TV together.