Television viewing and obesity in adult males.

We estimated the extent to which time spent watching television is associated with obesity and super-obesity among 6,138 employed adult males. After adjustment for age, smoking status, length of work week, measured physical fitness, and reported weekly hours of exercise, people who viewed TV more than three hours/day were twice as likely to be obese as those who viewed less than 1 hour/day. Those who viewed for 1 to 2 hours daily had a relative risk of 1.60 (1.21, 2.11). Physical fitness consistently confounded the associations between TV viewing and obesity/super-obesity, but the other control variables did not do so.