Sedentary Behavior and Dietary Intake in Children, Adolescents, and Adults

Abstract

Context: Sedentary behavior is implicated in youth and adult overweight and obesity. However, the relationship between sedentary behavior and weight status is often small or inconsistent with few studies controlling for confounding factors such as diet and physical activity. Diet has been hypothesized to co-vary with some sedentary behaviors. It is opportune, therefore, to review whether dietary intake is associated with sedentary behavior in young people and adults. This may allow for better interpretation of the diversity of findings concerning sedentary behavior and weight status.Evidence acquisition: Published English language studies were located from computerized and manual searches in early 2010. Included studies were observational studies assessing an association between at least one sedentary behavior and at least one aspect of dietary intake in children (<11 years), and/or adolescents (12-18 years), and/or adults (>18 years).Evidence synthesis: 53 studies (k), totaling 111 independent samples were eligible for this review. Sedentary behavior in children (k=19; independent samples=24), adolescents (k=26; independent samples=72), and adults (k=11; independent samples=14) appears to be clearly associated with elements of a less healthy diet including lower fruit and vegetable consumption, higher consumption of energy-dense snacks, drinks and fast foods, and higher total energy intake. Strength of associations were mainly in the range of small-to-moderate. Conclusions:The association drawn mainly from cross-sectional studies is that sedentary behavior, usually assessed as screen time and predominantly TV viewing, is associated with unhealthy dietary behaviors in children, adolescents and adults. Interventions need to be developed that target reductions in sedentary time to test whether diet also changes. ContextSedentary behavior is rapidly emerging as an important issue in public health. Researchers are now investigating the role of sedentary behavior in diverse health outcomes. Typically, researchers have defined 'sedentary' as not meeting a criterion level of physical activity.However, by sedentary behavior we are referring to very low levels of energy expenditure through sitting and lying. Excessive sitting time is essentially the main concern for sedentary behavior researchers. 1,2 Studies are now showing associations between sedentary behavior (usually assessed as screen-based behaviors such as TV and computer use), and a range of health outcomes, including all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease, 3, 4 adverse metabolic profile, 5 and obesity. 6 However, relationships are not always consistent across age, gender or health outcomes. For example, while there has been a longstanding assumption that TV viewing in youth is associated with overweight and obesity, 7 a meta-analysis of mainly cross-sectional studies found that the strength of such an association was actually very small. 8 Moreover, a review of sedentary behavior intervention studies showed inconsistent weight loss for young people. 9 ...

What undermines healthy habits with regard to physical activity and food? Voices of adolescents in a disadvantaged community

“…In a similar vein, screen-time has previously been associated with a high intake of, for example, energy-dense snacks and energy-dense drinks (Pearson & Biddle, 2011). Moreover, the adolescents stated that it is hard to stop playing video and computer games because they play them every day, and they are always available to them, unlike P.A, which is something they engage in only occasionally.…”

What factors are associated with frequent unhealthy snack-food consumption among Australian secondary-school students?

“…There is consistent evidence to show that consumption of snack foods is positively associated with television viewing (20,(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) , yet research assessing the relationship between snacking and other eating, physical activity and sedentary behaviours and sleep duration is scarce. A small number of studies have looked at the association between snack consumption and fruit and vegetable intake in adolescents.…”

Adolescent television viewing and unhealthy snack food consumption: the mediating role of home availability of unhealthy snack foods

“…Data from the USA suggest that adolescents are engaged in screen media for over 7?5 h/d, with most of this devoted to TV viewing (18) . Adolescents who spend large amounts of time watching TV are at particular risk of unhealthy eating behaviours (19) . For example, TV viewing has been associated with increased meal frequency and food intake (20,21) and more specifically, it is positively associated with energy intake and consumption of energy-dense foods and beverages, and negatively associated with consumption of fruit, vegetables and fibre (19,21) .…”