The single biggest impact a parent can have on their kid’s weight is to get them to watch less TV.

Some parents spend less time at work than their kids spend in front of the TV, playing video games, being on the Internet, and listening on their MP3 players. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that the average child spends 6.5 hours a day consuming all types of media. Imaginative play is becoming a lost art.

Media consumption isn’t the only consumption going on. Kids are chowing down food to the tune of 600 calories while watching TV. This has been found to be a major cause of obesity. It’s not so much watching TV that’s the problem, it’s eating while doing it.

You can see the effects of TV watching in weight statistics. Teenage girls who watched television for 1-3 hours per day were 40 percent more likely to be overweight than girls who watched less than hour a day. Girls watching 4 hours of TV a day were 50 percent more likely to be overweight. Similar results were found for boys.

What has been said about TV seems to apply to electronic games too. Kids who play electronic game get less physical activity and are more likely to become obese.

A report by the Institute of Medicine found “strong evidence that television advertising influences the food and beverage preferences of children aged 2-11 years.” The report said that most of the food and beverage products promoted to children are high in calories, sugar, salt and fat and low in nutrients and many are promoted with popular cartoon characters.

So, TV encourages your kids to make poor food choices, to play passively, and to eat while watching TV. After all this, is TV bad? Not at all. But watching too much TV is bad.