Earlier this week, the EU announced plans to combat childhood obesity by delivering free fruits and veggies to schools. Would they be better off delivering free Wiis and other active video games?
But more recently, studies exploring the effects of games that require players to do more than sit in one place have revealed how the diversions can improve the body. Among the latest work to connect weight loss in kids with video entertainment comes from Robin Mellecker and Alison McManus of the University of Hong Kong. In the September 2008 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, they report that elementary school children who played video games for 35 minutes a day could burn around 150 calories, enough to prevent weight gain in an average-weight child. The discovery echoes similar findings published in Pediatrics in December 2006, which found that super active video games can work as well as traditional play time in terms of energy expenditure.
If you’re not a big fan of urging more video games for your kids, you might be able to use these articles as a weight loss tool. They can definitely get the pulse going.
