Should be Screen - Time Allowed While Eating?

Though eating seems to have a lot more connection with the alimentary canal of the body, it does impart some effects on the brain as well. Healthy eating habits not only ensure a strong and immune body, but it also guarantees an agile mind. However, what we have seen is most parents complain about their children too fussy while eating and don’t take much in properly taking their meals. This often makes the parents try different methods to divert their kid’s attention and make them eat. Engaging children with television, mobile phones, digital games, and cartoons are a common way to keep them busy while parents can feed them without facing any problem. Allowing the kids ample screen time during the eating sessions is a common practice. But do you know exposing your kids to digital screens while feeding them is doing them more harm than any good? Yes, you read that right!  Here are some of the most common ill effects that excessive screen time during eating might have on a young mind.

Threat of Obesity

When engaged with television, games, or mobiles, children forget to pay attention to their appetite and end up eating more than required at times. This excessive intake of food often leads to gaining extra pounds, which may finally lead to obesity. This happens because when children get so much engrossed with cartoons and games, they hardly divert their attention to anything else besides enjoying the screen. Eating thus becomes a customary work for them, and they eat the food following repetitive action and not hunger. Sometimes kids also continue eating beyond their regular appetite to enjoy some more screen time. Watching TV or playing games on smartphones during lunch or supper can hence turn harmful for the overall health of children.

Distraction

Watching TV or playing games while eating causes an amount of distraction for the brain to send out wrong signals. This restricts the taste buds from receiving the optimum taste of the food. This, in turn, makes the meal unsatisfactory and reduces the absorption of nutrients into the body. Therefore, if you wish your child to gain complete nutrition from the meals, make sure that you reduce or limit their screen time while eating.

Low Metabolism

Metabolism is an essential and significant physiological process, especially for children for whom growth is the most important health aspect. Without sufficient metabolism, the growth progress might suffer and get restricted as well. Studies have revealed that stretched screen time during meals results inslower metabolism, which leads to several health hazards in children.

Indigestion

If the brain remains engaged with the visuals that a child watches during meals, it fails to generate adequate signals to keep the digestion flawless. Not understanding completely what and in how much amount the child is eating, the body fails to run the basic digestive operations properly, causing indigestion every other day. This deteriorates the overall health condition of a child gradually.

Low Family Bonding

Owing to the hectic lifestyle of today, it is the dinner table that serves as a family reunion station in most families. As such, if children remain engaged with a tablet, TV, or mobile phone throughout the mealtime, the precious and rare moments of togetherness are lost. This also impacts the bonding between children and parents in the long run.

We, at JP International School, ranked among the Top 10 Schools in Greater Noida, believe that just as a healthy diet is one of the prime necessities for good health, so are the healthy eating habits. No matter how nutritious the food is, but if it is consumed with sheer negligence, how can we expect the good results to come out? We have increasingly heard of incidences where either children throw tantrums at the dining table to switch to digital screens, or the parents hand over the smartphones to their wards to have a relaxed mealtime. We, at JPIS, want to spread the word that please avoid resorting to digital screens during your mealtimes if you want to have a happy and healthy family. Enjoy the mealtime as a cherishing moment to bond over with the family. Trust us, skipping the digital screens while eating is surely going to help not only your kids but the entire family in many ways.

- JP International School