TV WATCH : Potato Programs

For years, children’s advocates and advice columnists have warned about the dangers of too much TV for kids. For parents who worry that there’s something unhealthful about being a couch potato but do not know exactly what to tell the young ones (especially if mom and dad are Oprah or football junkies themselves), there is new ammunition.

In 1985, a study linked obesity in children with television. Now, researchers at UC Irvine have discovered a correlation between television viewing and high levels of cholesterol in youngsters.

The UCI study found that kids who watch between two and four hours a day are twice as likely to have high levels of cholesterol as those who watch less than two hours a day.

Those who watch more than four hours a day are four times as likely. Doctors say that high cholesterol levels in children are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease in adulthood.

Are kids somehow getting zapped with cholesterol rays by the tube? No, it’s the sedentary lifestyle that creates the problem. Dr. Kurt V. Gold, a resident in pediatrics at UCI, says that kids who watch lots of TV are bombarded with ads for junk food, and, indeed, they are big consumers of those items. And if kids are watching television, they aren’t physically active.

Dr. Gold suggests, only half in jest, that maybe parents should buy a TV set that only operates when people are exercising. Short of that, how about simply tuning out such notions as “average three hours a day of TV viewing” as an acceptable family norm?