Study Tries to Use Video Games to Combat Obesity

A recent study tying video games to juvenile weight loss resulted in an increase in healthy snacking, but no measurable changes when it comes to a child's body-mass index.

The 's Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention (CHIP) hosted a guest lecturer Thursday who spoke about the possibility of using video games to combat obesity in 10 to 12-year-olds.

Dr. Thomas Baranowski, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, gave the lecture entitled “Serious Play: Videogames for Diet and Physical Activity Change."

Baranowski focused on two video games, “Escape from Diab” and “Nanoswarm: Invasion from Inner Space,” developed for a study that considered ways to prevent obesity and diabetes in young children.

“We’re not going to reverse the obesity epidemic based on the studies that have been done,” Baranowski said. “We need more exciting approaches.”

After seeing two short clips of the gameplay, Jerry Jalette, a graduate teaching assistant at UConn, said that the study used the same software that a number of other researchers are currently using.

The budget for the study was $9 million, which is significant for a study of this kind, according to Jalette. Yet,  it pales in comparison to the budgets of games developed by multi-billion dollar companies like Blizzard Entertainment or Bungie.

“It’s nice to see that academics are getting closer,” Jalette said.

The games used in the study targeted fourth graders and resulted in a slight increase - 0.67 servings daily - in the amount of fruits and vegetables the children who played the games ate each day, Baranowski said. The results were calculated two months after the games were played.

Even though fruit and vegetable intake increased, there was no corresponding difference in the children’s body-mass index (BMI) or in other mediating factors, Baranowski said.

The games will likely be distributed in the future to schools by a private company as a package with workbooks and corresponding activities, according to Baranowski.

Baranowski is also involved in studies involving active gaming on the Nintendo Wii platform, as well as a casual game developed for smartphones to train parents in “effective vegetable parenting practices.”

Baranowski is the founding president of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity and has been an author or co-author of 260 peer-reviewed articles, 26 book chapters and two editions of a textbook on evaluation methods for health promotion programs.