As I checked in through White House security, I began to mentally prepare myself for the day’s coverage. It was an intimidating concept to me, in many ways, as I was ushered with various different reporters from C-SPAN, CSNBC, The Washington Post and a host of others to the press room. There, I began to set up my materials and get ready for the panel of specialists from various national secretaries, politicians and even celebrity figures who would be addressing us. As the morning events unfolded and I furiously jotted down notes, I listened intently to troubles that America was facing that this group would hopefully defeat. Concepts like “ending massive obstacles to health care,” “combating threats to our nation’s national security” and words like “epidemic” kept me riveted on the various speakers who had determined the topic of the day was one of the steps that would help America advance and triumph over these great challenges.
And the topic of the day?
Videogames.
That’s right, videogames. With obesity becoming an epidemic in this country in which nearly 1 in 3 children are considered “obese,” we are finding medical insurance and health costs rising dramatically to combat issues, such as growing cases of diabetes, heart troubles and other medical complications directly related to obesity. Meanwhile, 25 percent of our nation’s population between ages 18-25 is considered too obese to serve in our volunteer military, and this lack of ready soldiers is seen as a threat to our national security, as we have struggled to fill the ranks of retiring or discharged members.
With all the seeming problems caused by obesity, how could videogames do anything to help fight it? Weren’t they known for encouraging children to stay indoors, ignoring fresh air and exercise? Weren’t a growing number of children ignoring physical activities to sit in front of videogames like so many couch potatoes?
These criticisms have been offered for years. Although there may be validity to them, there is equal validity to the concept that videogames are here to stay. If they can be used to help kids get active, eat healthy and stay fit, then video games may also be an untapped resource to market fitness and nutrition to gamers even as they play.
This was the concept that drove the idea of Apps for Healthy Kids.
The Apps for Healthy Kids challenge was created to coincide with First Lady’s Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative, which seeks to end childhood obesity. About $60,000 worth of prizes were awarded to the winners of the challenge Sept. 29, 2010.
“Citizen solvers like those in the teams being honored today are at the heart of the Obama Administration’s commitment to increase the use of prizes and challenges to solve tough problems,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra during the ceremonies in which the winners collected their prizes.
Since the start of the competition in March 2010, 95 submissions were accepted from students, winners, developers, designers and organizations. Winners were selected by a panel of judges that included top industry experts, such as Apple Computer Co-Founder Steve Wozniak and President and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association Mike Gallagher; the Apps for Healthy Kids competition was sponsored by the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. Funding for the GE HealthyImagination Students Awards was provided by General Electric. More than 21,000 votes were tabulated, more than 44,000 supporters assisted and submissions were received from 29 states and DC.
“This competition allowed us to harness combined creativity of game developers, local youth and adults to work collaboratively to produce fun, innovative games and tools that promote healthy lifestyles. Today, we are honored to award the talent of our nation’s motivators while encouraging nutritious food choices and physical activity,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack before the winners of the videogame section were introduced.
I was first treated to a group of college students from the University of Southern California who built Trainer (a game that encourages players to strengthen their virtual pet by training alongside it by with interactive webcam technology) when they took up the First Lady’s call to action. These students stepped up and defeated all other contenders in their age group by winning the GE HealthyImagination Student Award and then, in the true Cinderella-story fashion, they went on to crush all other opposition and seize the Grand Prize in overall standings.
Although the makers of Trainer won the grand prize, they weren’t the only winners in the competition. Food Hero (corporate Recognition Award) calls on players to make nutritional food choices and become more physically active by becoming a “Food Hero,” who learns to eat right and completing sets of running, biking and swimming challenges. In Fitter Critters (runner-up), players are given a virtual pet; it lives or dies only with their ability to learn healthy eating habits and use them to feed their pet safe and nutritional meals.
However, while those and other games were fun to watch, I was more impressed and intrigued by the winners of the prizes dedicated to apps.
Tony’s Plate Calculator (winner of the Popular Choice award) is an online tool that helps you calculate the nutritional values of a single item of food, an entire recipe, or a full days worth of food. Work It Off (winner of the GE HealthyImagination Student Award) is a mobile application for the Android phone that teaches user’s the correlation of calories they eat and what they burn. The user simply talks into the phone, speaking a food, and is given options to work it off.
Pick Chow! won the Grand Prize for apps, but I was somewhat less impressed by it. It encourages users to create their meals by dragging and dropping food onto their virtual plate. The “Add it Up” meter shows the nutritional value in a fun and easy way for kids to learn. However, the graphics were more designed in a cartoon-like style that was obviously created to appeal to a much younger audience.
Though I get the fact the initiative was supposed to be encouraging young people to overcome obesity, it is also a fact that gamers range from pre-teens to seniors of all races and genders. And just as clearly, obesity is a problem that 1 in 3 Americans are facing, not just 1 in 3 young adults. Limiting the design and language to appeal to only the pre-teen audience seemed like the competitors were missing the boat.
Pushing past the appeal of such games to kids, I was more impressed with apps that did a good job as opposed to ones that looked aesthetically pleasing. Actually, I was most impressed by an app called PapayaHead (a runner-up). This is a family meal planning website structured to help families plan nutritional, inexpensive and easy-to-make meals. The graphic style was not limited to “cutesy-pooh” styles but showed the facts in crisp, efficient ways that helped me plan a menu and structure one meal, meals for a day and even for the whole week.
On the same page was The Snack Neutralizer (honorable mention). This is a tool designed to be used in the classroom by showing kids the consequences of eating specific foods. Again, more neat and efficient design than stuff designed for kids only, it was clear that many of the voters were more wooed by clever graphics than improving their lives.
I know games are supposed to be a fun, and making a game that is both fun and educational can be somewhat challenging, but we’re not dealing with games here. We’re dealing with apps. I’m not bouncing over to a healthy eating app simply because it looks “cute.” I’m doing it because I want to learn a thing or two.
Still, even the kid-friendly apps were educational, some of them coming with add-ons for teachers to use in the classroom to work with their students. The ones designed for families were more my speed, however, and I already have encouraged friends and family members to take a look at them as I am already a believer in their value.
Check back here at GamersInfo.net for a more comprehensive look at all of the games and apps in a companion piece to this article.
