KEY POINTS:
School-based lessons on how not to watch television and swipe card activated time-control monitors on the TV are being considered as ways of tackling childhood obesity.
The Government has forked out $150,000 for researchers to look at ways to get kids off couches. Suggested methods include swipe cards to deactivate TVs and "intervention lessons" at school.
Yet some childhood obesity experts are doubtful the measures will work. They say once a child has a TV habit, it's extremely difficult to break.
Links between television watching (and junk food advertisements on television), over-eating and lack of exercise were well-documented, Auckland University lead researcher Ralph Maddison told the Herald on Sunday.
Some adolescents watched the box for up to 35 hours a week.
"Because it's such a passive activity people tend to eat a lot while they're doing it, without actually realising that they are."
He said swipe cards successfully tested overseas were electronic devices which programmed in "time allowances". Other options include co-operative child-parent planning, or just "throwing the TV away".
Which might not be easy, because Kiwi kids love their tele. A report from New Zealand's Agencies for Nutrition Action group noted last year that the average TV viewing times of Kiwi kids were similar to figures from the USA, widely believed to be the "heaviest" viewing country in the world.
A US study found children receiving TV reduction lessons at school cut their viewing times by an average of a third and gained less weight than peers.
Researchers here plan focus groups with parents to determine the preferred intervention method. A trial would be held in the new year, Auckland University's Maddison said.
Dr Robyn Toomath, spokesperson for lobby group Fight the Obesity Epidemic, said intervention lessons at school were "highly unlikely to be successful" in changing children'sviewing.
