At the moment, South Africa and the rest of the world is gripped by Cricket World Cup Fever. But is the tension making you munch?

The newspapers are full of stories surrounding this great sporting event and it is impossible to switch on the TV without seeing men in colourful outfits bowling or batting all day long. However watching hours and hours of this TV coverage could have a devastating effect on your waistline.

Watching sport takes time
If you are an armchair sportsman and never participate in any physical activity, but sit glued to the screen for every sport offering dished up by SABC and DSTV, then chances are that you are spending whole days at a time watching sport, instead of being active.

I have it on good authority that the Cricket World Cup matches take about five hours each and there are umpteen matches as team after team slowly gets eliminated. By the time the last ball of the Cricket World Cup has been bowled and we know who the new World Champions are, you, as a TV viewer may have spent more than 400 hours or nearly 17 days sitting immobile in front of the TV screen!

Then there are the various Golf Tournaments that run over four days and last about five hours per day, which works out to 20 hours per tournament, and Fridays and Saturdays when a determined rugby fan can spend nearly two days watching his favourite teams slogging it out on the rugby field.

So if you are a sports fanatic with a TV, then you are doomed to gross inactivity for hours, if not days, every week.

The munchies
Not only does this incessant TV watching entail inactivity, but it is usually accompanied by highly fattening munching habits. Most TV sports fans will steadily consume beers or other alcoholic drinks and munch high-fat snacks for the entire watching period. This is really bad news for your waistline.

If you keep in mind that alcohol provides 29 kJ (7 cal) per gram (second highest after fat which provides 37 kJ or 9 cal per gram), then all those beers you put away during an exciting match, go straight to your stomach where they form abdominal fat, the most dangerous type of fat to have in the body.

For interest's sake I checked the energy, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium contents of some of South Africa's favourite snacks without which no cricket or rugby match would be worth watching, according to the fans. Here is a breakdown of the large quantities of energy, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium you ingest with every thoughtless nibble:

Snack	Energy content per 100g	Total fat per 100g	Saturated fat per 100g	Cholesterol per 100g	Sodium per 100g
Maize snack cheese flavour	2271 kJ  543 cal	34.7g	15.6g	0mg	1000mg
Potato chips	2227 kJ  532 cal	36g	16.2g	0mg	700mg
Biltong, Beef, with fat	1348 kJ  322 cal	14.1g	5.5g	135mg	2240mg
Biltong, Beef, without fat	1039 kJ 248 cal	5.9g	2.4g	135mg	2240mg
Biltong, Game	1429 kJ 342 cal	6.7g	2.6g	235mg	2600mg
Droë Wors, Beef	1749 kJ  421 cal	33.9g	14.4g	56mg	1140mg
Peanuts, salted	2431 kJ  581 cal	49.3g	6.8g	0mg	433mg
Mixed nuts, unsalted	2528 kJ  604 cal	54.7g	8.1g	0mg	7mg
Popcorn, plain, unbuttered	1908 kJ  456 cal	21.8g	3.3g	0mg	1940mg
Popcorn, sugar-coated	2018 kJ  480 cal	20g	2g	0mg	56mg

(Adapted from the SA Food Tables, 1996)

Scary facts.
Mind-boggling isn't it? "But I don't eat 100g of chips or biltong when I watch TV", I hear you say. Well, next time you are sitting in that easy chair for hours on end watching other people burning kilojoules, look at the packet of snacks or biltong or droëwors or nuts that you are eating and check the weight. The cheese-flavoured snack mentioned in this table, sells in packets of 175g, while the chips come in 125g packets.

If you unthinkingly nibble away during a match, you can easily put away more than 100g at a session. And how do you buy your favourite biltong or droëwors? Per 100g? No ways! You may buy 500g at a time and when the TV-watching is over, there's very little biltong or droëwors left. So don't kid yourself - with this kind of mindless nibbling you can polish off far more than 100g of these snacks without even being aware of what you are doing.

Possible solutions
Are there any solutions to the problem of TV watching for hours and days at a time accompanied by lavish intakes of alcohol and snacks?

Well, for a start you can limit how many hours you spend in front of the TV. Ration yourself, be selective, choose one match a day or even better, only one match a week to watch. Chances are you'll really enjoy this selected match more than if watch every single one slumped on the couch in a zombie-like state.

Make a pact with yourself to exercise briskly for exactly the same number of hours each week that you spend in front of the TV. You can even do some of the exercises while you watch. Try skipping - it's a wonderful cardiovascular workout which can trim a few centimetres off that boep.

Limit how many beers or other alcoholic drinks you have while watching. Try the "light" varieties - they can reduce your energy intake by 30-50%. Or drink dry white wine with ice or diluted 50:50 with iced water. Drink sugar-free cold drinks, or water if you get thirsty, or have diluted fruit juice for a change.

Ration your snacks to 1 x 30g portion of one type of snack per match. Or copy those soccer managers who chew chewing gum while their teams battle it out. Sugarless gum adds no energy to your daily intake, it cleans your teeth and fools your body into believing that you have eaten something by making you feel satiated.

Be daring and munch carrot or celery sticks, cucumber wedges or baby tomatoes instead of the above-mentioned high-fat, high-energy snacks and you won't only be sparing your boep, but topping up on loads of healthy vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and dietary fibre.

Too much to ask?
Is this too much to ask of any red-blooded SA cricket or rugby fan? Well, at the very least be aware of the danger to your waistline, your heart and your blood pressure if you indulge during the World Cricket Cup and all those other sporting events.

(Dr I. V. van Heerden, April 2007)

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