Video games may rot your brain, but it turns out they?re good for your stomach
Want to eat better? Trying playing video games.
A new study by researchers at Georgia Tech's College of Computing has found that playing a health-related video game on a mobile device can help adults make healthier diet choices.
The game, OrderUp!, puts players in the role of restaurant servers who are approached by virtual customers and asked to make the healthiest food choice from three available options.
"Our participants said [the game]led them to have discussions about nutrition. People would ask them about the game, and that led them to start comparing food choices and information," the game's creator, Andrea Grimes Parker, said in a release.
Those who participated in the study were asked to play the game at least once a week for three weeks.
Parker noted that after the three-week period, "We found that people learned how to make healthier choices when eating out, reassessed the healthiness of their current eating habits, began having productive conversations about healthy eating with people in their social network and, finally, actually started introducing healthier foods into their diet."
So video games may rot your brain, but it turns out they're good for your stomach.
The research was recently presented at Ubicomp 2010, an international computing conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.