According to a new study, people eat more when they're watching television they find entertaining.

Dr. Alan Hirsch, the neurological director for the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, conducted an experiment in which folks were given chips to eat while watching Letterman and Leno, and chips to eat when not watching any TV at all. As it turns out, they ate more chips while watching TV because they paid less attention to whether or not they were full while distracted by what was on the television.

So really, it's not so much television that makes people eat more than they should as it is distractions in general. It doesn't matter if you're watching Leno alone in your apartment, or if you're having a picnic outside and a clown gets in a slap fight with a cowboy right in front of you. Either way, you'll be paying less attention to the quantity of food going into your mouth.

Nevertheless, TV should do its part to help people eat more sensibly. I think the best way to do this is to occasionally put things on the TV screen that make people lose their appetite. For example: after every joke, Letterman should take a bite out of an actual human eyeball.