News

TV watching toddlers pile on the pounds

Health
Every hour of television a toddler watches a week increases their waistline and compromises their fitness, a new study has found.

Researchers from the University of Montreal in Canada analysed the amount of television 1,314 children watched a week at 29 and 53 months of age, and the effect this had on their muscular fitness at age six and waist circumference at age eight.

To measure children’s fitness they took part in a standing long jump test where they were asked to jump as far as possible while keeping both feet together.

The data was taken from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development, a study of Canadian children which followed their development from five months to eight years old.

They found that children commonly watched 8.82 hours a week of television at 29 months old and more than 14 hours a week by the time they were 53 months old.

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