The Thin End

Food, food, and more food.  More and more television programs are devoted to food.  Some are pure entertainment, like Hell's Kitchen with Gordon Ramsey.  In reality, they are all entertainment, of course.  These shows can be a bit like watching the weather forecast behaviours can view but not take in any of the recipes - a cold front here, a dash of this and that.  Yet others have a semblance of the educational about them.  But do they influence our eating habits? Whatever their intention, they influence our approach to food.  But what about children? Can they make children hungry for fruit and veg? Television programs featuring healthy foods can be a key ingredient in leading children to make healthier food choices now and into adulthood. A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior , published by Elsevier, found kids who watched a child-oriented cooking show featuring healthy food were 2.7 times more likely to make a ...

When I was growing up in the 1950s we didn't have Television. One or two of my school friends had one, and we would go round to their house after school and watch a bit of television with a tea of bread and jam. It was just a bit of TV. Mostly we played outdoors - running around playing cowboys, or reenacting exploits in WW2. The more I think back, I realise just how much more active we were as children in all types of weather. We never seemed to do things standing still. We now know that our lifestyles at an early age impact on our health and wellbeing in later life. Adhering to a healthy lifestyle at age 4 years is associated with a decreased risk of overweight, obesity, and abdominal obesity at 7 years, according to a study published in Pediatric Obesity . The study assessed five lifestyle behaviours—physical activity, sleep duration, television watching, ultra-processed food consumption, and plant-based food consumption—in 1,480 children when they were 4 years of age. Limi...