That's "exertainment"
A month or so ago (Daily Dose, 1/29/05), I wrote to you about how some kids' television networks are supposedly taking steps to help curb childhood obesity - by featuring "interactive" programming designed to get children up and jumping, dancing, singing, and burning calories instead of just sitting there mesmerized like lumps of wet Wonder bread. And although I do wonder whether these are just PR stunts or real efforts at addressing a growing problem (we'll see if they stop running the fast food, cereal and soda ads on these interactive shows), one thing is clear: Whether honestly intended or not, measures like these show that the entertainment world is at least aware of the obesity problem. Not to be outdone by TV, another major segment of the on-screen commercial universe is banking on the market's receptivity to activity-based entertainment... Video games. At the most recent International Consumer Electronics Show, a 4-day event in Las Vegas, the biggest buzz wasn't in response to the latest high-definition big-screen offerings from Sony or Toshiba, but about a group of electronic "exergames" that require activity and physical interaction on the part of the user. Among the games on display were a fully interactive golf simulator that allows players to use their own clubs and a "best-of-show" award-winning racing game that players pilot using their entire bodies. Also featured, according to an Associated Press article on the show, was a home version of a dancing game that apparently enjoys great success in video arcades both in the U.S. and in its native Japan. Konami's Dance Dance Revolution gets players stepping lively to reproduce increasingly intricate dance steps and sequences indicated by colored flashing lights on a floor-mounted grid of sensors. The $60 home version of the game comes complete with a calories-burned calculator. I don't know if any of this is the solution to childhood obesity. My gut tells me that it's just an exercise in self-preservation on the part of video-game makers who are increasingly the target of parents' ire for turning their kids into screen-addicted couch potatoes... But as I said in the previous Dose about "interactive" TV programming: Kids are going to be glued to the tube no matter what nowadays - they might as well get some exercise while they're at it, right? At least they might learn to dance or play golf in the process. **************************************************** Reinventing Vending? If TV and video games sound like unlikely weapons in the arsenal against childhood obesity, they appear downright sensible compared to the "engine for healthy living" another major fat-making industry is attempting to re-invent itself into... I'm talking, of course, about VENDING MACHINES. In a poorly disguised attempt to neutralize the rapidly increasing trend to ban these killer machines from public school districts, the vending machine industry's main lobbying organization, the National Automatic Merchandising Association, is promoting a new "Balanced for Life" program (snort!), featuring the Snackwise Nutrition Rating System to help kids choose their snack foods more wisely. Of course, the wisest choice would be no vending-machine fare at all. The software-based system combines data on a snack's calories, fat, sugar, protein, fiber, calcium and other ingredients into a point value, then assesses a color code that indicates how "healthy" the choice is. Developed by the Columbus Children's Hospital in Ohio, the new rating system is being co-opted by the vending machine industry in a full-court press that includes an endorsement by football great Lynn Swann, currently the Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. Here are my questions: First, how can one of the highest-profile physical fitness personalities in the country be simultaneously the living incarnation of the President's commitment to children's health AND the paid spokesman for the vending machine industry that's causing major health problems for those very same kids? And second, what could they possibly put in vending machines that would actually be healthy for our kids to eat, yet still last months without spoiling? It sure couldn't be the pork chops, tuna, steak, eggs, apples, carrots, tomatoes, and strawberries I'd be recommending if the President all of a sudden put ME in charge of keeping kids healthy. Which reminds me, how does a wide receiver become an expert in nutrition? I guess the same way Terry Bradshaw became an expert on psychiatric feel-good pills - "Pax-ill." Never defending what the junk-food lobby's vending, William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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