It's tempting to eat in front of the TV when there are so many TV shows and movies to watch. But is it really a good idea?
Eating in front of the TV doesn’t have a great reputation for being healthy. The term “TV dinner,” which emerged in the early 20th century in the United States, conjures up images of a processed meal loaded with salt and additives, eaten while sat on the couch.
So, does eating a healthy plate full of vegetables and grains in front of the TV also have negative effects on health?
There are some signs of this. Studies show that eating in front of the TV is not a good habit, regardless of what is on our plate. Here's why:
We don't realize that we are so caught up in the plot that we are fed up.
There is a lot of research that shows a link between watching TV and an increased risk of obesity, partly due to lower levels of exercise.
But watching TV may also be affecting how much we eat.
Distraction has been cited as one reason why people eat more while watching TV, says Monique Alblas, a communications expert at the University of Amsterdam.
When we're caught up in a compelling storyline, we pay less attention to food and become unaware of the bodily signals that tell us we're full, which can lead to overeating.
There is also research that suggests that when we eat in front of the TV, we don't remember what we ate and can't accurately estimate the amount we ate, which can lead to us eating more.
When Alblas analyzed data collected by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, he noticed that people ate for longer periods of time while simultaneously watching television.
This analysis also revealed that people were unaware of how much they were eating because they were distracted.
The findings don't show that people are eating more or exactly what types of food they are eating, just that the time spent eating is longer.
However, there is current research showing that time spent eating is associated with taking in more calories, according to Alblas.
Another reason we eat more while watching TV may be that food doesn't taste as good when we pay more attention to what we eat.
This may be because we don't get as much satisfaction from food when we're distracted, says Floor van Meer, who researches mindless eating and studies social, organizational, and economic psychology at Wageningen Food Safety Research and Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Van Meer has conducted numerous studies on eating and the human brain when we are distracted. In one study, participants were asked to memorize a short or long number while eating, and those who tried to memorize the longer numbers reported that their food was less sweet. In other words, participants were less satisfied with their food because they were paying more attention to the number.
In these individuals, Van Meer could see less activity in brain regions associated with taste perception.
The researcher, who says there is a theory that people always try to reach a "hedonic goal", says that if we cannot get the amount of pleasure we expect, we look for it elsewhere.
If a television program doesn't meet expectations, you may eat more to compensate.
Our emotional state also plays a big role in our eating behaviors.
There is some research that suggests we may choose less "hedonistic" foods like chocolate or popcorn when watching something that makes us happy compared to something that makes us sad.
What do we eat while watching TV?
Research suggests that exposure to food advertisements may cause people to eat more in general.
But what worries researchers most is their association with ultra-processed foods (UFPs) and advertising, which have been linked to obesity and other diseases, including heart disease.
“Evidence suggests that even brief exposure to food advertising can increase children’s likelihood of choosing the advertised food,” says Fernanda Rauber, a researcher who studies nutrition and health at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.
He also notes that children are more likely to eat UFP while watching television.
Other effects of distraction
Distraction can also lead us to eat less or not eat at all, Van Meer suggests.
According to some studies conducted on children, their attention is too distracted to eat much.
This effect has also been found in studies of adults, where those who watched the same episode of a TV series twice ate an extra 211 calories compared to the group that watched two different episodes. This may be because they were less distracted, says Dick Stevenson, a professor of psychology at Macquarie University in Australia.
In other words, if the TV we watch is engaging enough, we may forget to eat the meal in front of us. But when the TV bores us, we may eat more.
Should we avoid eating while watching TV?
There are several theories as to why we might eat more when we eat in front of the TV, but there are some challenges to reliable research in this area.
Researchers often look at data generated by people recording their own behavior, which isn't always reliable.
Researchers have also studied people eating and watching TV in lab settings, but the nature of TV viewing is that we typically relax at home, so trying to recreate that in a lab could be difficult.
“We know how television affects eating, but there are many things we don't know that need to be better understood,” Alblas says.
How much television impacts eating depends on many factors, including the type of content we watch, Stevenson says.
What we watch can change our mood. The pace of the programme can also make a difference. One study found that action films can make us eat more than watching an interview programme.
And of course, how delicious the food is, how impulsive we are about food, also matters.
There’s also research comparing it to other distracting activities. One study found little evidence that we eat more while watching TV compared to other things, like reading, playing video games, or eating with friends.
Source : https://www.bbc.com