Lose Some Weight, Fatty!
Hey, that is what the game wants you to do. Look at this article while I wait for ping pong on the 360 and Total Recall to work on my NES. Later.
It's irony, contradiction, and a paradox all in one: the very thing often blamed for helping to promote obesity among our nation's children is now being used as a tool to help overweight kids.
"The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective" is a free online computer video game developed by HMO giant Kaiser Permanente and Scholastic to teach kids how to make better health choices, from food to activity.
"We've got about nine-million young people right now in this country who are overweight; 75 percent of them are going to be obese adults and they are going to be at high risk for diabetes, cancer, heart attack stroke and other chronic diseases. We need to get to them while their behaviors are being shaped," Ray Baxter of Kaiser Permanente said.
"There are eight characters, you pick a character and the food detective opens the case file and explains what the problem is: this child doesn't get enough calcium, this child exercises but eats too much. You go to the case and you help solve the problem. So for example, you might move protein foods out of the refrigerator and off the stove onto the young person's plate, or you might zap the food to reduce the portion size. Once you solve the problem that way, you then go to a series of mini-games, and the mini-games relate to the problem. You can also go to printed activities like recipes for healthy foods or logs to chart your exercise," Baxter said.
Back to the whole paradox thing – I'm sure some of you are asking the same question I initially asked which is, "What if some of the kids this game is targeting end of liking this game so much that they play it for hours on end?" Developers are way ahead of you.
WATCH THE VIDEO
Nutrition gameA new video game hopes to combat obestity by making healthy eating a mystery.
"It's got an automatic shutoff," Baxter said. "And at 20 minutes, you're told, 'Stop, time to go outside, get active. Go do 100 pushups; you can come back in sixty minutes and start again."
In fact, some more irony, while you're playing the game, you have to help a kid stuck in front of his computer playing too many games.
This is not the first title designed to teach kids about living a healthier lifestyle, though developers claim it's the first that's free and also available in Spanish.
So far it's been distributed, along with supporting books and pamphlets, to 5,000 schools around the nation.
It's irony, contradiction, and a paradox all in one: the very thing often blamed for helping to promote obesity among our nation's children is now being used as a tool to help overweight kids.
"The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective" is a free online computer video game developed by HMO giant Kaiser Permanente and Scholastic to teach kids how to make better health choices, from food to activity.
"We've got about nine-million young people right now in this country who are overweight; 75 percent of them are going to be obese adults and they are going to be at high risk for diabetes, cancer, heart attack stroke and other chronic diseases. We need to get to them while their behaviors are being shaped," Ray Baxter of Kaiser Permanente said.
"There are eight characters, you pick a character and the food detective opens the case file and explains what the problem is: this child doesn't get enough calcium, this child exercises but eats too much. You go to the case and you help solve the problem. So for example, you might move protein foods out of the refrigerator and off the stove onto the young person's plate, or you might zap the food to reduce the portion size. Once you solve the problem that way, you then go to a series of mini-games, and the mini-games relate to the problem. You can also go to printed activities like recipes for healthy foods or logs to chart your exercise," Baxter said.
Back to the whole paradox thing – I'm sure some of you are asking the same question I initially asked which is, "What if some of the kids this game is targeting end of liking this game so much that they play it for hours on end?" Developers are way ahead of you.
WATCH THE VIDEO
Nutrition gameA new video game hopes to combat obestity by making healthy eating a mystery.
"It's got an automatic shutoff," Baxter said. "And at 20 minutes, you're told, 'Stop, time to go outside, get active. Go do 100 pushups; you can come back in sixty minutes and start again."
In fact, some more irony, while you're playing the game, you have to help a kid stuck in front of his computer playing too many games.
This is not the first title designed to teach kids about living a healthier lifestyle, though developers claim it's the first that's free and also available in Spanish.
So far it's been distributed, along with supporting books and pamphlets, to 5,000 schools around the nation.
posted by Brian at 11:24 PM
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