Eating while watching TV or playing with electronic devices is a common habit nowadays, but though seemingly innocuous, it can lead to unintentional calorie consumption resulting in weight gain, the John Tung Foundation warned.
“UK researchers have discovered that people who are in the habit of not paying attention to what they are eating often consume more calories than they realize,” the foundation said.
A US study in 2006 also found that people who watch television while eating consume an average of 793.7 calories per meal, compared with the 538.2 calories eaten by those who eat while listening to music, it added.
Hsu Hui-yu (許惠玉), director of the foundation’s Department of Food and Nutrition, said people are inclined to underestimate the importance of undistracted dining and paying attention to what they eat.
“During busy weekdays, a lot of people consistently eat whatever food is most convenient and wolf down their meals in minutes. Then, when the weekend comes, they end up binge eating to make up for lost calories,” Hsu said.
Hsu said that the key to avoiding unwanted weight gain lies in undistracted dining and chewing food carefully, because hurried or inattentive eating can result in the brain delaying signaling a feeling of fullness, thereby prompting the person to eat more than they need to.
Insufficient chewing can lead to indigestion and gastric distention, Hsu said, adding that inappropriate dining habits can also impede efforts to keep off lost weight.
The foundation said people should focus on the joy of eating because it can bring them a sense of satisfaction and a pleasant fullness.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching