|
The Amazing Food Detective & Snackdown Smackdown
Click here for "The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective"
Since late 2007, we have all become familiar with Kaiser Permanente’s newest spokesman, Pete Wiggins. Six years old, he makes us laugh in our latest Thrive commercial when he talks about the perils of not taking care of yourself. The ad is really well done. It reminds us that we are never too young or too old to live well and thrive.
 Click here for kp.org/kidwisdom
The ad also reminds us of the obesity epidemic that too many of our children are facing earlier and earlier in their lives. The rate of childhood obesity has tripled in the last 15 years. The result is that 15 million of America’s children are now overweight or obese. This has led to a major spike in the number of kids developing Type II Diabetes, a phenomenon that was a rarity only a couple of decades ago.
The facts are clear. Childhood obesity leads to sick kids. Sick kids become sick adults. And these sick adults tend to develop multiple chronic diseases and die younger. We are looking at the beginning of a terrible cycle, which has led many public health officials to declare childhood obesity an epidemic and an imminent threat to the health of our country.
At Kaiser Permanente, we take childhood obesity very seriously. But in thinking about how we could reach kids with messages on healthy living, our bright minds in Community Benefit also recognized that nothing would make kids tune out faster than another lecture. So they got creative, and put together a fun and interactive video game that truly connects with kids – the Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective.
Based on a popular Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre Program character, the Amazing Food Detective encourages players to make healthy food and activity choices for eight young, multiethnic characters in the game.
The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective seems to be an early success in our efforts to address childhood obesity. This video game that we designed and produced internally challenges nine and ten year olds to solve health and nutrition related mysteries. It’s educational, but it’s also fun.
The feature that we like the most about the Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective, other than the content of course, is that after 20 minutes of play, it shuts off and won’t let the player back on for an hour. Why is this good rather than a game malfunction? Because when it shuts off, it encourages the child to go out and get some exercise. To be active. It tries to teach an important balance that children and all of us should have between sitting at a computer and getting exercise.
The game builds upon the work of Kaiser Permanente’s Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) and Community Health Initiatives (CHI) to actively work in the communities we serve to create changes that make it easy for people to make healthy choices.
The video game industry has taken notice of our efforts. The Amazing Food has won two prestigious, industry-leading awards: the iParenting Media Award for 2008 Best Products Call and the “Best in Class” Award from the Interactive Media.
Teachers also love it. According to a Scholastic survey of teachers who received the game and learning materials, 79 percent found the game was effective, useful and fun. Teachers said the game influenced students, who began to replace junk food in their lunches with fresh fruits and vegetables. Other teachers commented that students were becoming more active both at school and at home with their families. The teaching materials and printable activities, developed in collaboration with Kaiser Permanente’s pediatric weight management experts, have been downloaded from kp.org over 30,000 times.
You can play the game yourself and also checkout materials for parents by visiting: www.kp.org/amazingfooddetective. We encourage you to try it out at home, with your children.
| 
