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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

They may not make them exercise more...

[cheekyjohnson]

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