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Apps For Healthy Kids — Where PC Meets PCs
theodp writes "Put the Grand Theft Auto, Halo, and Madden away, kids! Over at Apps for Healthy Kids, First Lady Michelle Obama has a whole new slate of games for you to play with! Voting on entries in the White House-backed game development competition has begun, and you'll find exciting titles like Balanced Meal (6 votes), Blubber Blaster (9 votes), Calorie Quest (10 votes), and Count Peas (7 votes) — and that's just for starters."
Would be to not let "Kids" near a PC.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Government, leave our kids the hell ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
What they should reaally do, is physical games. I.e. like Wii Fit, but not really boring. E.g. something like whack-a-mole, but with boxing instead of a hammer!
Backwards? But it isn't just about the exercise. It's also about social skills. Keep them "safely" indoors all day and, well, you know what happens... you'll have met kids like this in forums and online games. They are not pleasant to be with; they are rude, selfish people, and it's because they are poorly socialised. Some of them are technically adults - they are the saddest examples. We can get used to ignoring the flames, the trolls and the gamer rage on the Internet, but imagine how such people cope in the real world. "Not very well" is the answer.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
No seriously, good job. You're sure to reel in the fatties with titles like "blubber blaster". I'm sure the most popular game is going to be something like "Lardass Limbo" and "Stop eating so much fatty". With titles like that, I'm sure the kids will start playing them by the droves. /sarcasm
Do they think kids are that stupid?
Eat sleep die
Yes, it can be as simple as weigh change = calories in - calories burned. The complications are that the type of foods and eating habits make a difference and that cutting back on calories alone can't affect significant weight loss. A starvation diet going below 1200 calories a day with zero exercise (which usually backfire, btw) can only drop 1 lb of weigh a week. The best best is diet improvment and getting mild to moderate exercise.
Besides, there is more to health than simply weigh. Percent fat and cardio health are just as important. Dieting your way to a skinny body doesn't imply that you have either. You might just be an out of shape, weak hearted thin person. That 200-lb guy that runs ironman will probably outlive you.
I agree on the commercialization of weight loss. Too many diet products on the shelves when the answer is get off the f-ing couch, do a bit of exercise, and stop buying crap food that puts on lbs like Doritos, Taco Bell, McDonalds.
My judgement isn't based on the title alone, rather the whole context in which they're produced.
Comparing a US gov't project to something Nintendo pulled off doesn't work very well..
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
On the one hand, we can continue to encourage kids to play video games and be antisocial, and hope that games with anti-fast-food themes will out-compete games like Halo. On the other hand, we can encourage kids to not play video games, and spend their time outdoors socializing and engaging in physical activity with each other, and hope that such activity will out-compete video games. Gee, which plan is going to be more effective (not that either one will be enormously effective)?
Of course, if we devote as much effort to telling kids that hang out with each other and play outdoors as we do to telling them that there is something wrong with enjoying the effects of drugs, we will hurt the profits of the corporations that produce video games. Since "the business of the United States is business," any plan that involves hurting corporate profits is a plan that will never actually happen.
Palm trees and 8
Well, rest assured that you're right and at least I know it.
My wife is in medical and it's a HUGE problem among kids because they're not getting enough exercise and the biggest culprits are video games and lack of greenspace for kids to run around - suburban American life is making kids fat. She asks the kids what they do all day: sit in school, go home and do home work and then sit and play video games - all of them have that story.
And being fat at such a young age leads to horrible health consequences later on: diabetes and all the issues with that, heart disease, high blood pressure and all the issue with that, etc....
Our health costs are just going to continue to balloon because of this and we're, of course, going to blame the insurance companies, big pharma, and everyone else but ourselves.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
If you want to make a game to encourage kids to be healthy, make a really shitty game like the orginal E.T. for Atari. Kids will play it for about 2 minutes before turning it off and going outside to make a tree-house.
In my opinion, making a good game and encouraging physical fitness and healthy eating are mutually-exclusive activities. I can tell when I have bought a really good game by the amount of time I have been stuck in the house glued to the game and all the garbage food I eat while playing it because I'm too busy to get up and prepare a healthy meal.
How about having good food in school. Not low cost high fat stuff? also give the kids time to eat so they use the full 30 min lunch standing in line to just have 10 min or less to eat it. NO MORE recess time shared with launch. Make it it's own time.
How about having good food in school. Not low cost high fat stuff? also give the kids time to eat so they use the full 30 min lunch standing in line to just have 10 min or less to eat it. NO MORE recess time shared with launch. Make it it's own time.
Yes, this. Also, have a class that teaches kids how to cook. A lot of kids move into adult life not knowing how to prepare any food more complicated than macaroni & cheese, so it's no wonder they go to McDonald's when they're tired of their diet of mac&cheese, ramen noodles and ordering pizza.
30 minutes is enough time to eat if you brought your lunch from home. Otherwise, it's insane.
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How easy is it to get decent "ready meals" (in American: TV dinners?) in the US? I think Britain is pretty much a world leader in this (there's nowhere near as much variety or quality meals available in the rest of Europe, but it's a while since I was in the US).
Here ready meals are available from less than £1 to over £5 per portion, with a wide variety of dishes (perhaps 80 options in a small inner-city supermarket, large supermarkets have hundreds). It's not so difficult to avoid anything unhealthy, and mostly the nutrition info is prominently shown on the front. The ones costing £3 or more tend to be better than what I can cook from scratch for myself in a reasonable time (e.g. this.)
(Some of this stuff is ridiculous. Can't people microwave a potato any more?!)
Supermarket pizza is still cheaper though, and plenty of young people can't cook very well.
Lunchtime at school is one hour (I think that's a legal requirement...), and every school I've seen staggers when various classes are allowed to go and queue.
The whole concept of “being manly and fighting is bad” smells of the matriarchal sexism that is so fashionable nowadays.
I'd say it's your idea of "being manly" that's sexist. Saying that fighting is bad is neither sexist, nor is it going with the mainstream; our culture fucking loves violence.
Property is theft.
"(weight loss) = (calories in) - (calories exercised)"
This is even simpler to dispel by any sane halfway intelligent human. Every human on the planet either has an anus, or some medically constructed equivalent. The calorie counter group loves to throw out the laws of thermodynamics. Well, clearly they don't understand it, because as long as you have a functioning anus, it is physically impossible for their calculation to be accurate.