With childhood obesity on the rise, the United State’s biggest health maintenance institution on Tuesday September 25th offered an online computer video game to teach children what to eat — and then the computer video game shuts down after 20 minutes.
Kaiser Permanente, the non-profit health maintenance organization said “The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective was designed to teach 9- and 10-year-olds about healthy eating and exercise.”
The goal is not to keep children in front of the computer for hours, but to get kids moving. The computer video game has a function that locks players out after 20 minutes — and another function that won’t let them play the computer video game until for another 60 minutes.
The computer video game includes printable scavenger hunts to teach children how to understand food labels, experiments are also part of the game that help children learn how to measure sugar in drinks, make healthy recipes, “muscle-building exercises and family activities to promote better eating”.
The computer video game is part of Kaiser Permanente’s mission to fight childhood obesity, where rates have tripled in the past 15 years.
About twenty percent of children in the United States are now obese, raising “concerns about shorter life-expectancy and the sky rocketing cost of caring for adults with diabetes and other obesity-related diseases”.
West Virginia, the state with the biggest childhood obesity problem in United States, helped foster in the use of video games to battle the weight issue when it made Konami Corporation’s “Dance Dance Revolution” the dancing video game placed in public schools to be part of their curriculum.
“Over the past six years, Kaiser has partnered with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in developing an anti-obesity strategy.”
The computer video game The amazing food detective can be found in English and Spanish versions for free at www.kp.org/amazingfooddetective and through the CDC’s site at www.cdc.gov.
This is an extremely good idea, create an education computer video game that teaches children how to manage their diet and only runs for 20 minutes so the children actually go out and apply what they have learned from the online game. I suggest parents go and take a look at the game as said before it is free through the non-profit medical organization of Kaiser Permanente.
