Study: Watching TV has Strongest Link with Childhood Obesity

An international health research centre which looked at city children’s habits found that watching television is the lifestyle habit ‘most strongly associated’ with obesity in children. Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) studied 1,480 children, looking at five lifestyle habits: physical activity, sleep time, television time, plant-based food consumption and ultra-processed food consumption. Of these, television watching was found to have the strongest association with overweight and obesity, as youngsters who were less active and spent more time in front of the TV were at greater risk of being affected by weight issues, obesity and metabolic syndrome.