Adult Fast-Food Diets Tied to Too Much TV as Teen | Hacker News Reader

Adult Fast-Food Diets Tied to Too Much TV as Teen

washingtonpost.com

7 pointsvrs12 comments

"The connection? Too much time spent watching ads for fast food"

Occam's razor suggests a simpler explanation: the kind of people who watch a lot of TV also like fast food.

or - it's hard to cook when you're watching TV.

You could say that about a lot of things that people spend a lot of time on. "Hard to cook when you're coding." "Hard to cook when you're playing soccer." "Hard to cook when you're decorating the school gym for the homecoming dance."

I'd actually argue that cooking while watching TV is pretty easy to do. I know plenty of people who do that. In fact, I'm about to head to a Super Bowl party where we'll be BBQing while watching the game.

Any explanation must answer the "why". Their explanation says that they like fast food because they are exposed to more advertising, and we know advertising tends to work pretty well.

You propose a mere correlation, but don't say why that correlation exists or what causes it.

They're mistaking correlation with causation.

Here's the basic breakdown: Teenagers who spend 5 hours watching TV aren't spending that time exercising... FACT.

You'd also be surprised that watching TV actually increases mental activity, and I'd hazard a $100 bet that those kids are also playing video games and such. All of these boost mental activity, which increases the brains demand for glucose (even though it doesn't use up nearly as much as it makes us take in).

Could it be that these teenagers are eating sugary foods because their body demands it?

Those teenagers not spending 5 hours a day watching TV are likely getting much more exercise, which means they're spending less time using mental skills and thus their brains are likely demanding less glucose than the non-exercising teens.

Advertising works extremely well... when I'm trying to decide between PS3 and Xbox, Pepsi and Coke (to some degree), etc. However I see lots of advertisements for pregnancy tests, pantyhose and lots of other products that as a man I'm simply not interested in.

Edit: Occam's Razor stipulates the simplest explanation is often the correct one. If I spent 5+ hours a day not exercising, I'm likely to be over weight. In one week I managed to eat 4 big macs, 4 large fries, 4 large cokes and a ton of other crap foods and I lost weight. I work construction and despite eating up to 4000 calories in a day I still lose weight, because I do a shit load of exercise. I love junk food, however if I worked in an office I'd be seriously overweight.

Well technically I am seriously overweight, however that's because the BMI is a load of crap. Put it this way, overweight people are usually at risk of fast pulse (tachycardia) and high blood pressure, my doctor was concerned because I was bradycardic, my rest pulse got down to 47 at one point, however I'm good because I wasn't suffering from lethargy, I mean working 12 hour days isn't exactly the norm for someone with bradycardia. Thankfully I also have perfect blood pressure even though I'm like a 31 on the BMI scale (morbidly obese).

You'd also be surprised that watching TV actually increases mental activity

I bet it increases it in the occipital cortex, where primary visual processing is going on; this doesn't mean it's doing anything for these kids' cognitive capabilities. Do you have a citation?

My best guess would be that teens get pretty used to a very low level of activity... Using TV to fill 5+ hrs a day every day is going to alter how you feel about expending energy. Hence, requiring a very large convenience level for other things you do in equal routine.

Just a guess.

Either way, does this mean that those same years spent in front of a compiler mean that a kid's likely to have caffeine and cheeto problems later in life?

Jittery, bright-orange fingers?

I spent most of my youth in front of the TV and did previously have a real serious junk food habit. This article makes sense to me.

I have a hard time conceiving of any other kind of food at times mostly because junk food (and store bought equivalents) are was all that there was for me.

I suspect people that watch 5 hours of TV a night as teens make a lot less money on average. People that make less money eat more fast food because it's cheep.

Your brain uses very little energy while watching TV, as compared to studying physics. Keep in mind your brain can account for 20-30% of your caloric intake. So...the people that watch TV are saving calories (which to me is an appealing explanation of why people watch TV at all) and eat fast food for the same reason; they're poor.

There seems to be a preponderance of these types of tenuous studies in social science. Somewhere, I'm certain there is a procedure for generic, shifty research that looks something like this:

1. Think up a hypothesis steeped in your own prejudices, eg. fat people watch too much tv as kids

2. Construct an experiment that doesn't control for any of the MILLIONS of other possible causes

3. Discover correlations in experimental results. Conclude that hypothesis is true based on correlations.

4. Issue a press release and make some tangential recommendations, eg. better parenting is needed

Almost certainly high time preference rather than what the study claims to show.

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