‘Fattening of America’ Blamed on TV Viewing

Young Americans are more overweight than ever, a “fattening of America” that one researcher blames on a generation of couch potatoes that spends as much time watching television as in the classroom.

Rates of obesity among children and adolescents went up an average of about 45% between 1960 and the early 1980s, said Steven Gortmaker, associate professor and acting chairman of the department of behavioral sciences at Harvard University.

A key factor in explaining the rise are 1983 studies that show children spend an average of at least 25 hours a week in front of the television, said Gortmaker, who speculated that the actual number of viewing hours is higher.

“Television viewing for children is now practically a full-time job equal to the time spent in school,” he said, adding that television viewing is up from an average of 18 hours per week in 1968.

Diet, a general decline in physical activity, and TV commercials that reinforce the appeal of high-calorie foods contribute to the dramatic increase in overweight youths, said Gortmaker, who explained his “couch potato hypothesis” last month at an American Dietetic Assn. meeting.

The link between TV watching and obesity rates holds true for adults, too, he said. One study showed that adults who watch an hour of television a day or less have a 3% chance of being obese, compared to a 25% chance of obesity among adults who watch three hours per day.

Specifically, Gortmaker found that between the late 1960s and 1980, obesity rates went up 54% among children aged 6 to 11. Super-obesity rates went up 98% in the same age group. Among youths aged 12 to 17, obesity went up 39% and super-obesity rose by 64%.

Obesity and super-obesity were measured with a skin-fold test that does not readily translate into percentage of body fat or other measurements, he said.

The greatest increase among males was between the ages of 6 and 11, and the biggest among females was in those aged 12 to 17. Obesity was less prevalent among blacks than whites, but that gap has narrowed recently, he said.

Obesity is equally prevalent among wealthy and poor children, Gortmaker found. The greatest number of obese youths are found in the Northeast while the fewest are west of the Mississippi River.

Obese children face health risks including hypertension, psycho-social damage, respiratory and orthopedic problems. They also tend to become overweight adults, Gortmaker said.

To counter the trend, he recommended individualized programs to target overweight youths, and school and community-based nutrition programs.

In another presentation, John Foreyt, an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, reported that dieting has become the norm among American women and has become common among young children.

“We have become a nation obsessed with body shape, body size. Women in particular are not satisfied with their bodies today, either size or shape,” he said. “It’s not uncommon to see children in second, third and fourth grade begin to abnormally restrict their caloric intake.”

One study revealed that a group of well-meaning parents, fearful that their infants would become obese, actually caused nutritional dwarfing in their babies by restricting their food intake.

Although the average American man would like to lose one pound, the average woman wants to lose eleven pounds, he said.

“Why is this? We today have the first generation of girls growing up whose mothers had tremendous pressures to diet.”

Popular images, including beauty queens and models, feature women who typically weigh only 82% of average body weight, Foreyt said, warning that such images can have harmful psychological effects on women who compare themselves to these “very, very skinny women.”