Is eating in front of the TV really that bad for you?

"TV dinner" doesn't have a great reputation when it comes to health

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Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

With so many great shows and movies to watch on television these days, it's a challenge to catch up on them while you eat. But is a TV dinner really a good idea?

"TV dinner" doesn't have a great reputation when it comes to health.

This concept, which originated in the USA in the early 20th century, conjures up images of ready meals full of salt and additives, eaten on a tray in your lap while sitting on the sofa.

But what if you choose a different type of meal while watching your favorite television series?

You might think that a hearty plate full of vegetables and whole grains is a healthy habit.

However, does the simple act of eating in front of the TV invalidate all those healthy choices?

There are some indications that this is exactly the case.

Studies show that regular eating while watching TV is not good for us, regardless of what we eat.

Here's why:

Distraction and memory

Scientists have long known that our wider environment plays a key role in nutrition, and there is a wealth of research showing a link between watching television and a higher risk of obesity, largely due to the lower levels of exercise that come with such sedentary behaviour.

Watching television in itself can also affect how much we eat.

Distraction is one of the leading theories why we could eat more while watching television at the same time, says Monik Alblas, assistant professor of communication at the University of Amsterdam.

It could be because, when we are drawn in by an interesting plot, we pay less attention to eating and are not aware of the body's signals that tell us that we are full, which could lead to overeating.

There is also research that suggests we don't remember what we ate when we eat food in front of the TV and have trouble accurately estimating the amount of what we ate, which could mean we eat more later.

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She used already existing data collected by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, in which people were asked to keep a diary of everything they did over the course of a week, including eating and watching TV, and even the type of TV shows they watched.

When Alblas analyzed the data, she found that people ate longer while watching TV.

She also found that the total time they spent eating was longer on days they watched TV and ate at the same time, compared to days when they ate without watching TV, which she says suggests they didn't realize how much they were eating because they were distracted.

The findings in themselves don't show that people necessarily ate more or exactly what foods they ate, because the only thing they recorded was the length of time they spent eating.

Of course, as the results were based on voluntary reporting by the participants themselves, if people were delving into a particularly good plot, they may also have misremembered how long they ate.

But, says Alblas, there are studies that show that the time spent eating is correlated with the intake of more calories.

"And lab studies show that eating while distracted leads to increased food intake, so all the evidence is piling up to suggest that distraction plays a big role when you're eating in front of the TV," she says.

Another reason why we may eat more while watching television is that the food may not taste the same as when we are paying more attention to what we are eating.

This is because we may not derive the same satisfaction from food while distracted, says Flor van Meer, a data researcher at Food Security Research in Wageningen, who researched distracted eating while working at the university's department of social, organizational and economic psychology. in Leiden, in the Netherlands.

As a neuroscientist, Van Mer has conducted numerous studies on human brain activity when we eat while distracted.

In one study, where participants were asked to remember a short or a long number while eating, those who tried to remember the longer numbers complained that their food tasted less sweet.

Van Mer was also able to see less activity in the parts of their brains associated with taste perception.

"If you don't taste the food in the same way, you may not be as satisfied, and you're more likely to snack sooner afterward," she says.

(There's another side to this, says Van Mer; television could be a good way to get kids to eat vegetables if they don't like the taste.)

There's a theory that people are always trying to achieve a "hedonic goal," she says.

This means that we expect to get a certain amount of satisfaction during any given day or activity, and if we don't, we look for it elsewhere.

If a television show falls short of our expectations, we might eat more to make up for it.

Our emotional state also plays a big role in our eating habits, and there is some research showing that we may choose less "hedonic" foods, such as chocolate or buttered popcorn, if we look at something that makes us happier, compared to something that makes us sad.

What do we eat while watching TV?

Research has shown that exposure to food advertisements can also lead people to eat more in general.

But researchers are most interested in the connection between food advertising and eating ultra-processed foods, which are linked to obesity and other diseases, including heart disease.

"Evidence shows that even brief exposure to food advertisements can increase children's likelihood of choosing the advertised food, while repeated exposure reinforces that tendency," says Fernanda Rauber, a researcher at the Center for Epidemiological Research on Nutrition and Health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. .

She found that children are more likely to eat ultra-processed foods than minimally processed foods while watching TV.

The relationship between watching TV and eating is complex, even when it comes to the effects of distraction alone

That's partly because ultra-processed foods are perceived as more convenient to eat while watching TV, she says.

But increased exposure to advertisements for this type of food is also associated with greater consumption.

The effects seem to be more pronounced if children are already obese, perhaps because they are more sensitive to food advertisements.

And while family meals are usually associated with eating more vegetables and fruits, Rauber also found that kids eat more ultra-processed foods if they eat while watching TV with the family.

"In this scenario, any perceived benefits of family meals observed in other studies were overshadowed by the negative impact of watching television during meals," says Rauber.

"This highlights the complex interplay between dietary habits and environmental influences, and highlights the need for further research to better understand these dynamics comprehensively."

The other side of distraction

The relationship between television viewing and eating is complex, even when only the effects of distraction are involved.

Research also suggests that being distracted can lead us to eat less — or not eat at all, says Van Mer.

For example, Van Mer says some elementary schools in the Netherlands have decided to shorten the school day and have students eat lunch until classes are interrupted.

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Classes during lunch are usually more passive, so teachers will read something to students or play an educational video, says Van Mer.

But, she adds, many parents have noticed that at the end of the day their children come home with a full lunch box, which means they were too distracted to eat as usual.

This effect has also been observed in research on adults.

In one study, participants watched two episodes of the popular American sitcom Friends.

One group watched the same episode twice, and the other watched two different episodes.

During the second episode, both groups were offered different snacks.

The researchers observed that those who watched the same episode twice ate 211 more calories compared to the group who watched two different episodes.

This could be because they were less distracted, says Dick Stevenson, a professor of psychological sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

In other words, if the television program we are watching is interesting enough, we might forget to eat the food in front of us.

But when we are bored in front of the TV, we could eat more.

In another small study, participants watched a "boring" art lecture on television or an "exciting" TV series - or nothing - and were offered low-calorie (grapes) and high-calorie (chocolate) snacks.

The researchers found that a boring art lecture prompted participants to eat more overall, and an interesting TV series less, than a control group that didn't watch TV at all.

In other words - the more bored they were, the more they ate.

To make things more interesting, however, the main change in consumption was reflected in the number of grapes they ate, while the amount of chocolate remained mostly the same.

So, should we avoid eating while watching television?

There are several theories as to why we may eat more in front of the TV.

Reliable research in this area faces several challenges.

Researchers often rely on people's food diaries and tracking their own TV viewing behavior, but people often underestimate their own junk food consumption, Rauber says.

At least in the Alblas study, the participants from whom she took the data recorded every activity in their daily lives, so they were not particularly aware of tracking their meals or watching television.

Researchers also study people who eat while watching television under laboratory conditions

But the nature of watching TV means we tend to relax at home, so trying to recreate this in the lab can be a particular challenge.

"Direct observation methods can introduce behavior change bias, where participants modify their eating habits knowing they are being observed," says Rauber.

More research is needed in a real-life environment, Alblas argues, because our eating behavior - and what influences it - is very complex.

"We know some of the ways that TV affects food intake, but there are many pathways and things that we don't know that we need to better understand," she says.

How much TV affects our food intake depends on many factors, including the type of content we watch, says Stevenson.

It can affect our mood but also in unconscious ways - like if a character is eating on screen, we might also feel the need to eat with them.

The pace of the show can also play a role - action movies can make us eat more than watching an interview, according to one study.

It is very important what food we have on hand and how tasty it is, along with how impulsive we are when it comes to it.

Also, distractions are complex.

Watching TV may not be more distracting—and therefore doesn't make us eat more—than some other activities we do while eating.

One analysis of studies, for example, found that there is little evidence to suggest that we eat more while watching television compared to other things, such as reading, playing video games, or dining with friends.

Research suggests that our eating behavior is complicated and almost impossible to fully untangle.

Certainly, there are more layers to a "TV dinner" than simple processed foods high in fat and salt.

So, if you've decided on a healthier option, it might be worth considering whether to reach for that remote control at all.


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