When “free speech” means hoodwinking children to become obese through the advertisement of junk food or poisoning Americans with glorified ads for extremely toxic drugs, it is time to rethink what is going on – as both con games are costing the U.S. healthcare system and taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.  A new study done at UCLA shows that it is not the sedentary aspect of TV watching that causes children to become obese.  Rather, it is the number of commercials they are exposed to that is the actual culprit.

The researchers found that when hours in front of the TV were from non-commercial DVDs or non-commercial educational TV then obesity risk did not increase.  Enter the junk food commercials and obesity risk soars.

I’ll never forget the mother that came in for an appointment to get some help with her child’s eating habits.  Her wake up call was pushing her child down the supermarket aisles in a cart and being stunned as her child could sing the jingle for virtually every item of junk food in the store.

A second study lends further support to this notion, showing that less TV time (less exposure to commercials), ensuring adequate sleep (needed for optimal fat burning), and a family dinner (wherein higher quality food is typically prepared) reduced the risk of obesity in children by 40%.  These are relatively easy things for most parents to implement into their lifestyles and can have a profound benefit to the health of their children.

Sure it’s a free world, but as long as your children are living in your house then turn off the TV or enjoy programming that contains no commercials.

Posted by Mitchell at 08:13 PM.

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