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This essentially explains how people have consumed food over
time. There is incredibly strong evidence that caloric intake, not television, is related to obesity. Actual scientific studies put television at the
bottom of the list of causes of obesity, if at all. In contrast, searching
for what most people say via Youtube and Google gives results that society
blames TV and often puts it at the top of the list. Click here for an example of a video that blames childhood obesity on television. Click here for the source of the above graph and where the table was derived.
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Almost all studies show that television viewing does not cause adolescence obesity. The International Journal of Obesity states that the correlation between watching television and obesity is, "too small to be of substantial clinical relevance." The Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics found, in an in-depth study, that there was no correlation between body composition and television viewing behavior. Again, the Journal of Adolescence states, "Studies examining the relationship between television viewing and obesity in children and adolescents have consistently found weak, if any, associations between the two phenomena." Statistically speaking, the very weak correlation between body fat levels and television means that it is essentially impossible to prove that watching television causes obesity.
There are many other factors that are strongly correlated to obesity, and should receive the blame. The International Journal for Obesity suggests that the data indicates that television is "unfairly implicated" as a cause of obesity. Rather, there are clearly other factors that statistically and clinically strongly correlate to childhood obesity, such as depression, lack of exercise, high caloric intake, and quality of food.
Television is not the cause of adolescence obesity, but this does not mean all Americans should advocate more television viewing time. Yet it is important to understand that TV is not the root cause of childrens' rising obesity levels, so that the real causes can be understood and changes made. Clearly, television should not receive the blame for causing adolescent obesity.
This is a good point. A lot of people probably confuse inference and causation. There might be a lot of people who are both fat and watch television, however this does not mean that television causes obesity. It takes experiments, not observational studies to be able to state causation. There also could be an interaction between watching television and becoming obese, as ads on TV encourage eating more unhealthy foods. This does not mean that TV causes the obesity but that avid TV watchers might be more likely to eat unhealthy food because of the advertisements.
ReplyDeleteBen, I appreciate your comment and approval; I just want to clarify one point: that the lack of correlation in this article indicates there cannot be a causation effect. In statistics, correlation actually measures the frequency of both events occurring together. In everyday vernacular, this means that if skinnier people also happened to watch television less on average than heavier people did, then the correlation would be high. Ben, you wrote that there might be a lot of fat people who watch television, but actually a very low correlation means that there are just as many skinny people who watch television as well. This is of course a statistical simplification, but still essentially accurate. Mathematically, this means that since the correlation is low, there is very little connection between viewing television and obesity, so television cannot possibly cause obesity. I wanted to clarify this point, Ben, because you commented as if there was a high correlation, but this does not indicate causation. In fact, there is a very low correlation, which indicates that television does not cause obesity.
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