Watching your TV diet

10:03am Monday 24th November 2008

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A new study has come up with the perfect TV diet, the best combination of television viewing for our physical and mental well-being. Purely in the interests of science, David Roberts puts his telly habits to the test.

I’M a man who doesn’t watch a lot of television – or so I thought. I don’t watch any soaps, I hate reality television programmes and, apart from the odd film, football match or documentary, I didn’t have myself down as a compulsive viewer.

So when I made a note of all the programmes I watched in a week, which in all honesty was a quiet one as far as television viewing was concerned, I was quite surprised to find I’d accumulated 18 hours in front of the tube.

That’s nearly a full day. It is a full day if you reckon that the average person sleeps for at least six hours a day.

My shock at the realisation of how much television I watch corroborates the findings by Virgin Media who discovered that 71 per cent of people find themselves sitting in front of programmes for the sake of it.

All too often, once I come in from work, I simply turn on the box and don’t really care what it’s showing.

Virgin Media also tested the effect different genres of programme have on people, measuring viewers’ heart rates and how much they perspired.

The next step of my experiment was to send the list of my television viewing to the intriguingly- named Honey Langcaster-James, a leading psychologist who has compiled the ‘TV Diet’. Rather like a normal diet, this suggests the perfect combination of different types of television to achieve the best psychological and physical impact.

Her first comment was about the amount of football I watch. The week I monitored, it totalled seven and a half hours. Fortunately, sport leaves people with a moderately stable heartbeat and is unlikely to make people feel sad, says Ms Langcaster-James. “Our research showed that those who watched sport had a moderately stable heart rate, suggesting that it is relaxing physiologically to watch.”

I’m not sure who she supports, but, as a Newcastle United fan, I beg to differ.

My next major chunk of viewing was dominated by news and factual programmes. In total, I watched nearly five and a half hours of this, which bearing in mind that I work as a news reporter, is probably no surprise.

However, the TV diet recommends only five per cent of my viewing should be spent watching the news. This is because, despite the fact that we are being educated by watching the news, it does increase levels of stress and anxiety.

In a week where I watched 18 hours of television, the TV Diet recommends that just 54 minutes of that should be news, though I’m not sure my editor would appreciate it if that was the limit of my weekly current affairs intake.

Comedy was my third biggest single chunk of viewing. When I’m not watching sport or something more serious, I do find that repeats of programmes like Have I Got News For You?

and cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy account for a large proportion of my time in front of the television.

It is no surprise to learn that watching comedy can make you feel good and therefore is recommended as part of a balanced TV diet.

According to Ms Langcaster-James, my four and half hours spent watching funny stuff should be nearer six hours.

The one big black mark in my television diet was the amount of reality TV I watch. In my one week, this amounted to just half an hour of watching Last Man Standing. According to Ms Langcaster-James, I should be on more than two and a half hours.

Apparently watching reality television is beneficial as it provides more excitement than any other genre and also has a good ‘talkability’ factor, improving social interaction. Personally, the very idea of spending time discussing Big Brother is abhorrent to me, so I’m not sure how beneficial this might be.

Also, my lack of soap viewing was criticised as it meant that, apparently, I was missing out a genre which Ms Langcaster-James says “can in fact stimulate you through highly emotive content, causing physiological arousal”. So that’s what Hollyoaks is for… While I still remain a little sceptical of the television diet, it has been an interesting exercise realising just how much television I actually watch.

And despite what Ms Langcaster-James recommends, I still believe that watching programmes I like, rather than particular genres, is going to give me the most viewing pleasure and relaxation.

Or maybe, for maximum psychological and physiological health, I should just get out a little more.