Watching Top Gear is worse for you than smoking!

Top Gear is worse for you than smoking - Jeremy's in trouble!

According to a study published by the  British Journal of Sports Medicine, watching TV – yes, that means even Top Gear – is more detrimental to your health than smoking.

The barking mad boffins who did the study concluded that for every hour of TV you watch you will lose 22 minutes from your life. Which means many of us over 40s who have, at various points in their lives, enjoyed the naughtier things in life, should probably stop watching TV right away in case we drop dead.

Of course, this is yet another fatuous study that has set out to either find the ‘evidence’ for a pre-ordained conclusion, or they let the Chimpanzees assess the data. According to the study, they started from the premise that:

 Prolonged television (TV) viewing time is unfavourably associated with mortality outcomes, particularly for cardiovascular disease, but the impact on life expectancy has not been quantified.

Which seems a pretty damning indictment of the impartiality of the survey. They then explained that they would track TV viewing in their subjects and relate that to mortality expectations at birth to discover how TV viewing affected mortality.

The results of this madness are that:

Compared with persons who watch no TV, those who spend a lifetime average of 6 h/day watching TV can expect to live 4.8 years less. On average, every single hour of TV viewed after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8  min.

The conclusion reached by that result is that:

TV viewing time may be associated with a loss of life that is comparable to other major chronic disease risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.

Which must be as daft a conclusion as any set of morons could reach. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the bone idle amongst us probably spend more time in front of the TV than those who have a life. That’s why their figures show that those who watch TV die sooner, not that TV is the cause.

But I suppose it takes a bit of common sense to conclude that.

By Cars UK