Screen Time Eating Habits and Health

[Dr. Erica Kenney] So how does screen time affect eating habits? You know, it- this also seems like a little bit magical, right? Like, how could this possibly happen? Well, one pathway that I think many of us probably have experienced is this pathway of distracted or mindless eating, right. If you are watching a movie or watching a show, and you have a bowl of snacks, you’re not necessarily as able to pay attention to whether you’re actually still hungry or not, whether you actually even still like the taste of what you’re eating. It’s harder to sort of pay attention to those cues from your own body for how much you’re actually consuming. And that can lead to overconsumption of foods. And most of the time, unfortunately, too, like when we’re snacking, a lot of our snack foods that we have available to us are, you know, less- are things that are- go through our body quickly, we digest them quickly, they’re high in sugars or refined grains. So we kind of, like, our bodies don’t realize how many calories we’re taking in, or sugary drinks where there’s a lot of sugar in those, and we’re not really conscious- our bodies aren’t kind of aware of how much we’re actually eating. So that can lead to overeating.