Latest research finds that TV and computer games do not make children into couch potatoes.

TV 'does not create couch potato children'

Extract:

"Watching a lot of television or spending hours playing computer games does not turn teenagers into couch potatoes, psychologists say.

Latest research suggests children who spend longer than average in front of the television are just a active as those who do not.

Stuart Biddle, the professor of exercise and sport psychology at Loughborough University, yesterday argued that blaming television and computer games for the lack of exercise and growing weight problems among young people was too simplistic."


Actually, what is most important is the amount of salt/sodium in a child's diet. When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.

Because children have much smaller bodies than adults it would be best if they had no more than half as much salt as adults. Most children, however, have much more than this because they eat so many snacks and instant foods.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!- See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Couch potatoes are costing NHS £1bn a year, claim Oxford University researchers, but they are mistaken.

Couch potatoes costing NHS £1bn a year, say researchers

Extract:

"Britain's couch potato tendency is costing the NHS £1bn a year as diseases linked to physical inactivity rise, according to research published today.

Our sluggishness causes both disease and death, says the report by experts at Oxford University's department of public health. They estimate that in 2003-04 more than 35,000 deaths could have been avoided if Britons had enjoyed a more active lifestyle.

The study takes into account only the direct costs to the NHS of lack of exercise, focusing on the treatment of heart disease, stroke, breast and bowel cancers, and diabetes. There are also high indirect costs associated with days lost to sickness absence and premature death, private healthcare costs and home care."

These researchers are making the same mistake as those I wrote about in this blog entry http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2007/03/15-minutes-of-football-can-halve.html They are confusing cause with effect. Exercise does not reduce obesity and there is no evidence that it does.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html for the political and politically-related causes of obesity.

Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat and carbohydrate intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 BMJ article for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting.

Obesity is not caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention, which in turn is usually caused by sensitivity to salt and excess weight is easily lost by cutting down on salt and salty food.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)