14 DAY TRIAL // With the rate of teen obesity reaching 18 percent in the United States, experts are constantly looking for methods of reducing its incidence. One of the main reasons why obesity may be running rampant is because teens who play a lot of video games tend to eat a lot more than their peers who don't.
Official statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 33 percent of the adult population and 18 percent of the teen population in the country is obese. The high incidence forced experts to classify this as an epidemic.
Understanding the root causes of the spread of obesity, as well as implementing measures to curb their effects, is turning out to be a monumental challenge. Authorities cannot really address these issues without stepping on a few toes, and this makes progress remarkably slow.
In addition to excessive food intake, people who spend a lot of time playing on their computers or TV sets also don't get adequate levels of physical activity. When combined, these two factors are extremely potent for causing obesity, investigators say.
In the newest study on the issue, researchers in Canada and Denmark sought to determine if increased spontaneous food intake automatically accompanies increased time spent playing video games.
“This study is an especially important piece of the scientific puzzle in this arena because it went beyond simply simultaneously documenting the relationship between video game playing and food intake in kids,” explains Shelley McGuire, PhD, quoted by Science Blog.
“Instead, it actually studied the same group of children during two separate, experimentally-administered periods of rest and video-game play, and then used gold-standard methods to measure important outcomes such as food intake, energy expenditure, and feelings of hunger and appetite,” she adds.
“Consequently, the results can be used with a high degree of confidence to suggest that playing virtual soccer can affect food intake. Very interesting!” says McGuire, who is a spokeswoman for the American Society for Nutrition (ASN).
“Given our current obesity 'crisis' in kids, I will be curious to follow the results of follow-up studies. For instance, do violent games or educational games have the same effect as sports-related games?,” the investigator comments.
The new study was primarily focused on teen boys, aged around 17. This is the primary segment of the population that plays video game. In the work, experts found that playing video games for as little as an hour accounted for an increase in calorie intake.
However, the team admits that further work is needed to expand on this correlation.