Active Video Games Don't Make Kids Exercise More

redletterdave writes "Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, designed every kid's dream study: they passed out Wii consoles to 78 kids who didn't already have one, and gave half the kids their choice of active game — such as Wii Sports or Dance Dance Revolution-Hottest Party 3 — and the other half their choice of inactive game, such as Disney Sing-It Pop Hits or Super Mario Galaxy. The research team tracked the youngsters for 13 weeks, testing their physical activity levels with a motion-measuring accelerometer. Participants wore the devices on a belt during four different week-long periods throughout the study, which allowed the research team to determine when they were sedentary or lightly exercising and when they were engaged in moderate-to-vigorous exercise. Accelerometer logs showed that throughout the study period, kids with the active games didn't get any more exercise than those given inactive video games. There was also no difference in minutes spent doing light physical activity or being sedentary during any week the researchers monitored."

Comments

Same as school exercise

[mdarksbane]

Study after study has shown the same thing with exercise at school.

I wonder if the problem isn't so much that the average kid is being less active, as much as the current average diet is making those kids who *aren't* inclined to be active/have a high metabolism obese instead of just out of shape.

Re:Same as school exercise

[jerpyro]

As a parent of young children in a single-income household, honestly I see the next class division between those who can afford to feed their kids healthy foods and those who can't. I can see a difference in my kids' ambition and attention levels when we eat balanced, home cooked meals with vegetables and whole grains versus when they've had three days of "Pizza Night", "Cereal Night" and "Out to Eat Night".

It's scary what a good diet can do for kids, and it's even scarier that the diet is out of reach for a majority of people in America.

Re:Same as school exercise

[I'm just joshin]

Bullshit. People who can't feed their family well for less than the price of a pizza ($10-$20) are full of it.

Veggies are cheap, often under $1/lb.
Rice is less than $0.25/lb
Chicken Breasts can often be found for under $2.00/lb

The above is the core of a great meal that costs less than $6, will feed 4 people, and can be made in 35 minutes with only around 15 minutes of kitchen time.
(2lbs of chicken, 1 dry cup of rice, and 1lb of veggies)

And instead of spending $3-$4 on a loaf of bread, bake your own loaf of light wheat bread for around $0.25. With a bread machine, the work is trivial and the bread is better than store bought.

-J

Re:Same as school exercise

[Nidi62]

Go to any grocery store, and you can get packs of frozen vegetables for $1, and often times even less than that. While they are certainly not as healthy as fresh vegetables, they are still healthier and easily affordable, even on a minimum wage income. They are still far cheaper and healthier than pizza or going to a fast food joint, and they cook up in minutes. Combine that with a pack of $1.99 per lb of chicken, and you can feed a family of 4 for $5-6. Go to McDonalds, and 1 combo meal will cost more than that. A healthy diet is not out of reach for most of America. The problem is that most of America simply DOES NOT WANT IT. Just like with making sure your kid gets a good education, or has a good home life, it requires effort. Many people these days just don't want to have to make any effort.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

Yeah. All for the opportunity cost of one of those parents being at home to cook three square meals a day.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Rakishi]

I know this new fangled world is still baffling for you, having evidently slept for the last few hundred years, but during your nap we've invented certain things. They include the refrigeration, which is like the ice box of your time but keeps things cold (or even frozen) year round with no need to fit it with expensive blocks of harvested ice. We have also invented the microwave which is like a fast heating oven without the heat, fire or time the later requires.

I recommend you look into these fine inventions before commenting again.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Sancho]

Citation for my earlier claim:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/is-junk-food-really-cheaper.html?pagewanted=all

Re:Same as school exercise

[RogueyWon]

Sorry, don't believe you. The cheapest meals I eat each week are the ones I cook myself from fresh ingredients. The more expensive nights are the ones where I treat myself to a pre-prepared meal or a takeaway.

Fresh-cooked food takes longer to prepare and has a higher effort-barrier and, common pieties aside, unless you are a seriously good cook it may not actually taste as nice as the pre-processed stuff - but unless you're insisting on only buying organic and other daft middle-class obsessions, it's pretty much always cheaper.

Re:Same as school exercise

[mdarksbane]

I'd say ignorant and busy.

Many people do not know how to cook interesting food for cheap. Yes, it's something that they should learn, but it is entirely as much of a skill as algebra. It takes time to develop, is not really taught in schools, and if not taught at home is going to require a lot of self-motivation to pick up.

Similarly, much of good cooking takes time. If you have one parent working and another staying at home, you have that time. If you're both working, especially if you work long hours or have a bad commute, you may not have that time.

Does that mean that we should re-examine some of our societal priorities, or make a bigger deal about keeping two parents in households, or make teaching cooking and basic life skills a bigger priority? Yes. Definitely.

We need to realize that cooking, cleaning, shopping, and budgetting aren't things that people just know, even if *we* just know them because our parents taught them to us. There are all sorts of social capital that are so organic to our experience that we don't realize how hard it is to get by without them. That doesn't mean we should think it's cool to not know these things - but it does mean we should say "we should find a way to help people know this is an option, and how they can do it" rather than just saying they're too stupid and lazy to do it.

Re:Same as school exercise

[futuresheep]

Frozen vegetables can be more nutrient rich than fresh, especially if the fresh vegetables were flown in from another country or stored in a warehouse before making it to the supermarket.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2902223.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_vegetables
http://www.livestrong.com/article/71064-fresh-versus-frozen-produce-which-healthier/

Re:Same as school exercise

[atfrase]

Yeah. All for the opportunity cost of one of those parents being at home to cook three square meals a day.

It is very, very important for people to read and understand the significance of this comment.

Many folks from the "middle"-class on up simply don't understand what life is like for single parents, or even or dual parents who must work multiple jobs to pay the bills. Yes, raw food of the sort that can be prepared into healthy and nutritious meals is not (necessarily) inherently expensive; what puts it out of reach for many low-income folks is not the money but the TIME it takes to go to the grocery store, bring those foodstuffs home, and then prepare them.

Single parents cannot leave their small children unattended that long, and bringing them along adds even more logistical overhead. There often isn't a single grocery store in low-income neighborhoods, requiring an even longer car trip, if the family can even afford a car; otherwise, an even longer bus ride, which also limits the trip to how much can be carried in two hands to, from and on the bus.

Making a healthy diet accessible to low-income families is not an issue of price, it is an issue of availability and logistics, and those issues are NOT insignificant. People need to understand that, to avoid falling into the trap of thinking poor folks are just lazy -- they're not, most of them work harder than you do, I promise you. Unless you've actually been a low-income single parent, don't presume to understand what the challenges are.

Re:Same as school exercise

[moderatorrater]

I'm wondering if the problem isn't that we need to make kids exercise more, but that kids will exercise the same amount no matter what you do. We have many studies showing that we can't make kids exercise more, but we keep trying. It seems insane to me.

Instead of trying to control something that studies show is uncontrollable, we should control what we can. I would think we should make the exercise they do at school and at home as fun as possible so it's a positive experience in their minds and then teach them to eat healthy. Since eating appears to be the only part of the calorie equation we can control, this is the only way to fight childhood obesity. Linking exercise with positive things in their minds encourages them to continue exercising throughout their life.

Re:Same as school exercise

[mdarksbane]

I think the class division is already there, between those who have the acquired knowledge and prioritization to provide healthy meals on a limited budget, and those who do not.

It is definitely more *complicated*, but it does not require significantly more time or expense.

Today, I can throw together any of several dozen meals that will be cheaper and healthier than frozen or prepared foods, and only take an extra 10 minutes of prep. If I had tried the same thing ten years ago I would have been limited to ramen and mac & cheese.

It used to be that girls studied home economics and cooking, so that someone in the family would know how to handle these things. I'm glad women have other and more options now, but we need to do *something* to fill that knowledge gap.

Re:Same as school exercise

[moderatorrater]

I agree completely. It's entirely a matter of time. Food, Inc completely missed the point on this one too (before everyone chimes in with that documentary). It's not cheaper to eat out than it is to eat at home, it's just a matter of time and ability. My wife can cook a nutritious meal for us and our son with less than $5 pretty easily, but it takes her about an hour and a lot of equipment. It also takes a lot of skill that others might not have.

I don't know what the solution is completely, but it seems like classes like those they do for child seats would be useful. In my area they have classes where anyone can go and learn how to properly use their car seats. Childhood eating habits are at least that important. They also hand out coupons for cheap car seats for under privileged families their, they could do the same with kitchen implements.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Moryath]

Go further than that.

Check out the "produce" section in a lower-income neighborhood's grocery stores. Chances it's pretty small and what food is there is wilty and not appetizing-looking. Now go look at the produce section in an upscale chain like Whole Foods or Central Market; produce kept fresh-looking, wilted stuff quickly taken away, perky looking un-bruised fruits and vegetables.

It's not just a "smarts" thing. If I were looking to buy apples or bananas, and all the apples in the bin were bruised and scrawny looking and the bananas looked like they'd been left to rot, I'd probably skip the produce section too.

Re:Same as school exercise

[g0bshiTe]

Does not take time. You can eat very healthy by making Japanese Donburi dishes at home in about the time it takes to steam the rice start to finish for far less than I could make a store bought lasagna for.

Thin sliced meat (beef or pork), onion, green pepper, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, mushrooms, sweet mirin, and a bit of sake, serve over white rice with a fried egg on top and you're all set. It's tasty as hell, and very filling.

Re:Same as school exercise

[vlm]

Yeah. All for the opportunity cost of one of those parents being at home to cook three square meals a day.

Learn to cook. That is just so wrong.

Here's what I do. Make about 10 good meals at once on a weekend or whenever the cooking bug bites me. Shove in freezer. Thru the work week, remove from freezer and place in fridge in the morning, dump contents in frying pan, microwave, or whatever appropriate. Apply a bottled sauce from the fridge, or appropriate spices from spice rack, and eat in about 5 to 10 minutes. I can make healthy tasty prepared sorta gourmet frozen "real food" faster than I can heat up an icky expensive TV dinner.

So, I seared the surface of small chunks of beef sirloin on a smoking hot stainless steel pan for flavor, enough to make 3 batches of stew, then deglazed with cheap whiskey, then rebagged about half a bag of freshly chopped cheap vegetables with about a third of the meat, freeze in bags or tupperware. Stock 3 little cans/boxes of soup stock (veg or beef) in the pantry. In the morning next week, whip out ye olde slow cooker, dump in one bag, pour soup stock over the top, plug in slow cooker and come home to fantastic stew.

Take everything you need for a decent stir fry, bag and freeze. Next work night dump contents of bag into pan with a decent real oil, saute, dump from teriyaki sauce from a bottle in the fridge into the pan, and eat.

I also take great joy in cooking about 10 pound of lasagna and freezing a zillion servings. I made this one with grilled strips of zucchini instead of pasta and it was unbelievable.

Take plastic bag. Insert raw chicken parts. Parts is parts, right? Well chose whatever you like the most. Pour in a little marinade, some spices. Freeze for "awhile" maybe weeks. Come home from work, light gas grill on low, toss chicken parts on grill, flip occasionally while reading mail, surfing /. on the ipad, whatever. Serve with a spicy sauce from the fridge. You know what tastes good on chicken? Taco sauce. Weird but true. I never use barbeque sauce anymore since I discovered the miracle of taco sauce.

I like to make this homemade breakfast hash outta all kinds of vegetables, fresh mushrooms, some breakfast sausages, some nuts, and a bit of diced potatoe, I can saute that and drop some maple syrup on it and eat it, and its the breakfast of the gods, and it takes me about 10 minutes from think about it to all done eating, actually quicker than driving to mcdonalds and waiting in line.

You'd be amazed what you can do with frozen mystery meat philly cheesesteak product, breakfast sausages, the entire freaking produce aisle, etc.

Take a nice slab of cod, drizzle some lime juice on it (not too much) some pepper, some spices, I like it hot, whatever floats your boat. Freeze it. Don't make one batch, make 4 batches so you can eat it once a week for a month without any prep time. During the week, you toss that stuff in the steamer appliance (like $25 at walmart) set the timer for about a half hour and go do laundry or take a dump or whatever else you do after work other than eat and sleep. Amazing steamed fish for like 5 minutes work during the week. Uses medium salsa out of a jar as a dressing instead of boring tartar sauce, because face it, fish is boring without a little heat and spice.

Homemade kabobs freeze nicely and grill quickly. I like shrimp kabobs and dip them in salsa instead of that weird cocktail sauce. I have a "thing" for beef tenderloin kabobs with shitake mushrooms and bell pepper disks. To each their own, I guess.

I also like mix ins. You know whats boring as heck? Pasta and sauce. You know whats yummy? Pasta and sauce, and sliced grilled hot italian sausages with a bunch of sliced (sliced and frozen by me) vegetables mixed into the sauce and some extra spices sprinkled on the top, at least parsley but a little oregano helps. And maybe some freshly grated cheese (much cheaper if you grate it yourself) This goes double for

Re:Same as school exercise

[Ctrl V]

Many people do not know how to cook interesting food for cheap. Yes, it's something that they should learn, but it is entirely as much of a skill as algebra. It takes time to develop, is not really taught in schools, and if not taught at home is going to require a lot of self-motivation to pick up.

couldn't agree more. my attempt at learning found some good info online.

my wife makes fun of me, but I love this site: http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/

Re:Same as school exercise

[netsavior]

I spend about 3 dollars a person to make healthy and delicious food for my family. It IS super cheap, but you know, I interact with $500,000 (probably a low estimate) worth of stuff that lots of people don't have, in order to make it.
I have a comfortable house, functioning appliances, a full kitchen, a car, access to a grocery store, time to drive there weekly so I can keep fresh produce, internet access to find new and interesting things to cook, the correct pots, pans, knives, cutting boards, implements, etc to cook. I enjoyed a middle class upbringing, wherein my mother cooked, and demystified cooking. I have only one job, which has only occasional overtime needs, and that one job is enough for my household, freeing up more time. I don't work manual labor, so I don't need a heavy caloric load (try loading a truck on rice and lean chicken... you'll need to eat 9 meals a day)

Re:Same as school exercise

[justdiver]

"There often isn't a single grocery store in low-income neighborhoods" is exactly right. Detroit is a perfect example. There is something called an "urban desert" going on in Detroit. There are plenty of "shelf goods" stores. These stores have the grains and breads, cereals and noodles and plenty of canned veggies but you just try and find a store in Detroit that has more than a few bananas in their "produce" section. Aside from Eastern Market which is far from accessible for many Detroiters you'd be hard pressed to do so. You almost certainly have to drive into one of the suburbs to find a store offering fresh tomatoes or cucumbers. Some Detroiters have gone so far as to create urban-gardens where a whole neighborhood will pitch in working on a small plot garden. They share the responsibility of working the garden and share the produce it provides.

Re:Same as school exercise

[GospelHead821]

Maybe a lot has changed in the last 15 years but when I was in middle school and high school, cooking dinner a couple of nights every week was one of my chores. In fact, I can look back and cite that as the spark that ignited my passion for cooking and nutrition. It's a chore that a middle-school student can handle and will provide them with the foundation of the very skills that some posters are lamenting that many adults don't have.

I did, in fact, get burned once. It wasn't a hot pot or pan but the toaster of all things. It had jammed and because I had left it unsupervised, it had caught fire. I panicked and touched it to get it out from underneath the cabinets. I called 911 and they walked me through safely extinguishing the toaster fire. There was a follow-up call about 15 minutes later to make sure everything was okay. But was there any action from CPS? As far as I know, not a whisper.

One of my long-term goals is to become the Fred Rogers or the Bill Nye of food television. As with many things, I think that one of the keys to introducing good nutrition and an enthusiasm for preparing one's own food is to begin at an early age.

Re:Same as school exercise

[thomasw_lrd]

Flame much? My wife and I both work and make a pretty decent income. We also have 7 kids. We don't have to work more than one job to provide for our family. In fact, if it wasn't for my wife liking new things (we have two cars both with payments). She wouldn't have to work at all. Last year we made almost $90,000, and we live pretty comfortably.
Here's an idea. Go to school, get an education, and get a good job. But don't get a bullshit degree like english or biology. Get something useful like a nursing degree. You can get an lpn degree in about a year, and get a decent job. Go on and get a RN degree while working with your lpn. Get an even better job. Then you can get you're BSN online in most cases. Get an even better job then. Last and not least, go on and get an MSN degree. Again almost all online. Now you're making in the top 20% of income earners in the country. It's hard to do, but can be done. Look at my wife. She did it. While doing all the housework, and taking care of our children. I worked full time and took classes part-time. It can be done.

Re:Same as school exercise

[thomasw_lrd]

But I also agree with something another poster said. Our public schools/society fail to teach us what should be considered basic life skills. No one should walk away from school not knowing basic homemaking (cooking and cleaning), budgeting (balancing a checkbook and living within your means), and basic mechanical skills (car care/maintenance, home care/maintenance). And these are lessons that should start early in education.

This is one point where our school system really fails. Instead of teaching another year of US history to WWII, take that time and teach some mandatory life skills classes in the at least early high school.

Re:Same as school exercise

[stephathome]

I'd say give all kids some form of Home Ec, and have it include basic repairs around the home as well as cooking.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Beardo the Bearded]

My wife and I cook dinner every night and everyone gets leftovers the next day.

We've got a collection of recipes that kids like (i.e. the little fuckers will actually EAT it) that doesn't take fifty ingredients (i.e. Where TF do you buy saffron-infused avocado oil?) that won't bore the adults (i.e. No. We are not having pasta with tomato soup... again.) and can be on the table 30 minutes after we get home.

We've had a lot of luck with Happy Herbivore and Everyday Happy Herbivore (we eat vegan) but I'm sure there are a lot of meat-based cookbooks that let you get the food plated in half an hour. You can meatize a recipe by swtiching chicken for tofu. allrecipes is a good choice.

This week we're having Pad Thai, tofu "crab cakes", a Red Lentil Dhal, Etheopian Stew, and a couple of others I don't remember.

Groceries for a family of four are running about $100 a week.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

Yes, that's right. The alternative to my thesis, of course, is that poor, obese people must simply be too lazy to want to be rich and athletic.

We are saying the same things, but I don't think you understand what it means.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Guppy06]

Even STEM classes, the darlings of public education, are facing budget cuts. Funding home ec simply isn't going to happen, let alone make it more popular with boys.

Re:Same as school exercise

[andydouble07]

Yeah, all these people just need to work 9 to 5 like you and your wife, and everything would be a lot easier. It's a little more complicated when a couple has four part-time jobs between them, at all hours of the day/night, and have small children which require supervision. If only they were as "smart as you and could take their 9-5 jobs for granted."

Re:Same as school exercise

[s0nicfreak]

"People must work 3 fucking jobs just to make ends meet"

Bullshit. They may need 3 jobs to keep up with the Jonses and buy every luxury item known to man, but if you live frugally, even a part time minimum wage job is enough to pay for what you NEED.

When you have kids and a 2 parent house, having 1 parent stay home is actually cheaper than having both work. If both work you must pay for childcare, 2 cars, upkeep and gas for those 2 cars, work clothes, etc. etc. etc. When you have kids and a single-parent house, it is cheaper to work as little as possible.

I've been a single parent, and I've been a parent in a 2-working-parent household, and now I'm staying at home with the time to cook everything from scratch. Never mind the fact that even when I worked, eating a raw diet was an option.

Re:Same as school exercise

[ediron2]

On what planet are you that Schwann's is a cheap way to feed a family?

Re:Same as school exercise

[Ihmhi]

I don't know what the solution is completely

Here's a couple protips.

First, when you make stuff... make a lot. I'm gonna leave out a lot of important prep details here, but let's say you want to have chicken breasts for your wife and son. Buy a package of 8. Get 'em all cooked up real good and then go from there. First night, you'd have 3 of them grilled maybe. Second night, add in a bit of mozzarella and tomato sauce and have some chicken Parmesan. Third night, dice the remaining two breasts, spread over greens and have chicken caesar salad.

Think less about meals and more about doing ingredients in batches that can be used to make a bunch of meals. Having a plan is helpful as well.

Oh, and P.S. no matter how healthy you eat, make sure to order out at least once a week if you can afford it. Go for broke, let the kids eat as much pizza as they want on Saturday nights and whatnot. It might be expensive but unless you're down to nada in your bank account then make sure to set aside some money so you can have the night off from cooking AND treat the family.

I've been up like 28 hours so this is probably kinda rambly, but I hope I've given you an insight or provided something useful.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Chris Mattern]

The price of single parenthood or dual-(over)working parenthood is very high indeed (makes you wonder why so many are eager to have kids without any sort of stable 2 parent household).

It used to be considered a bad thing to have children outside of a stable two parent household. But nowadays we are much more enlightened and know that holding such opinions is horribly self-righteous and narrow-minded.

Re:Same as school exercise

[kyrio]

Good food does not take a long time to cook and it does not need tons of ingredients. Simple examples can be found by checking out Alton Brown's recipes/shows. Opening a cook book about real home cooking. Looking up recipes for traditional European or Asian foods.

I laugh at all of the people who go on about how milk and meat are so very necessary to being alive, yet milk was almost non-existent until about 1950 and the overuse of meat was still not as mainstream as it is now. If you look at the healthiest peoples of the world, they eat massive amounts of vegetables along with fish, very little animal meat enters their diet.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Beardo the Bearded]

That's interesting that you'd say that.

Which nutrients and macronutrients do you suggest that we are missing? Iron's readily available from plant sources. Every amino acid is available from grains and legumes. (Tofu and quinoa have them all.) Vitamins? Not really a problem with a plant-based diet.

Now, my kids are in the 99th percentile for height and in the advanced classes -- clear signs of terrible health. My daughter's in grade 2. She regularly gets perfect on the grade 5 spelling tests.

Sure, you can see their muscles a little -- it makes it hard to buy pants for them when the manufacturers are expecting kids that tall to weigh an extra 20-30 pounds. Shoes too, they don't make them for skinny kids. That's probably because we're not seeing the side effects of long-term antibiotics in our diet.

I generally eat about 3000 calories a day; I lead a very active lifestyle outside of sitting down in the cube for the workday.

Re:Same as school exercise

[Altus]

Yea, but do the behaviors of 13% of Americans really cause all of the childhood obesity in the US? If it was only the children of the poorest americans who were overweight I would agree with you that the problem is purely economic. Clearly when we are looking for solutions to an epidemic this large we should be looking at solutions that apply for the majority of Americans. The solutions to the problems of the poorest 13% are an entirely different discussion.

The idea that a solution is unworkable because it fails for a minority of Americans is foolish, especially when this solution does not preclude trying to solve the problems of the poor.

Re:Same as school exercise

[MartinSchou]

Now you're making in the top 20% of income earners in the country. It's hard to do, but can be done. Look at my wife. She did it. While doing all the housework, and taking care of our children. I worked full time and took classes part-time. It can be done.

So what you're telling us, is that you married a hard working and intelligent woman, and she married a lazy slob who can't even be bothered to help around the house?

Poor woman - she could probably do better ... ;)

kinect is a lot better

[alen]

i had a wii and even with the balance board the exercise quality was so so. and its easy to cheat with the controller

kinect is a lot better in making you actually move and there is no way to cheap since the software is looking for specific body positions not just movement of the controller

Re:kinect is a lot better

[Anonymous Coward]

> Both systems have their Pros and Cons.

True. But the Pros for the Kinect that the grandparent poster was talking about were in reference only to how much physical activity is involved.

The Cons for the Kinect that you mentioned were all in regards to its various possible technical deficiencies.

So...nice non sequitur, I guess?

You got to make kids do stuff...

[ZombieBraintrust]

Kids left to themselves won't change their behavior. Parenting means more than buying your kid a toy and hoping for the best. News at 11.

This reminds me of...

[filmorris]

I remember, once upon a time, when there was a thing called "outside". Kids didn't need videogames to exercise, as they did actual exercise. Seriously, thinking videogames=exercise is so dumb it should be illegal.

Causes of the decline of outside

[tepples]

A couple things not directly related to video games caused the decline of outside. One is the decline of pedestrian-friendly urban design. Suburban sprawl makes it difficult for children to find playmates in a like age group and for them to find a place in which to play. Another is public hysteria about child molesters who lurk in public play areas.

You get back what you put in

[na1led]

If your goal is to beat the next level in the game, then you don't expect much exercise. My kids play the Wii because their bored, and they just want to play a game. My wife uses the Wii to exercise and gets a good workout from it. It all depends on your mind set and what you expect to get from these games.

Accellerometer on the belt

[Issarlk]

How about putting the accelerometers at the end of the kids' limbs instead ?

Re:Accellerometer on the belt

[Zondar]

I thought the exact same thing. I remember playing one of those boxing simulators in an arcade several years back, one with motion tracking and real gloves you wore. I can guarantee that game burned more calories than any other game there, but the researcher's methodology (putting accelerometers on the belt) wouldn't have measured that either.

They may not make them exercise more...

[cheekyjohnson]

But they sure do excel at transforming them into cold-blooded murderers.

Even more important

[XxtraLarGe]

Will the PlayStation Move Sharpshooter make me a better shot?

Re:There's the problem!

[ZeroSumHappiness]

But we want them to work out their muscles, not their vocabulary of racial slurs.

Re:Cheat?

[vidnet]

Kids whose parents incentivize them.