Bedroom TV viewing ‘can increase children’s obesity risk’

Children who watch TV in their bedrooms could be damaging their health and adding to their risk of obesity, new research has revealed.

The team from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge carried out an assessment of 369 children and adolescents aged between five and 18 in order to examine the relationship between TV habits and health outcomes.

It was found that study participants with a TV in their bedroom and those who watched TV more than two hours a day were each associated with up to 2.5 times the risk of the highest levels of fat mass.

Moreover, bedroom TVs were also linked to three times the odds of elevated cardiometabolic risk, larger waist circumferences and elevated triglycerides.

Study co-author Dr Amanda Staiano noted that "having a bedroom TV is related to lower amounts of sleep and lower prevalence of regular family meals, independent of total TV viewing time", while observing that both of these factors have been related to weight gain and obesity.

This issue is also likely to be a growing problem in the UK, with NHS figures suggesting that one out of every seven children currently classifies as obese.