Active Video Games Don't Make Kids Exercise More 304
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."
kinect is a lot better (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Same as school exercise (Score:4, Interesting)
Citation for my earlier claim:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/is-junk-food-really-cheaper.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
Re:Same as school exercise (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
Fast food is extremely expensive. It's way cheaper to buy raw meats, vegetables and fruit. Grass feed beef and antibiotic free chicken, plus organic fruits and vegies are ideal and are on the expensive side, but going for the regular store stuff is still WAY healthier than fast food and also much more affordable.
Grains and complex carbs are all very unhealthy. A proper healthy diet should only consist of fruit, vegetables and meats (there is a LOT of room to do good cooking there, you can do many sauces and stuff just with vegies.) Nuts and mushrooms are also fine.
Bread, potato, pasta and rice are the biggest reason for obesity. You don’t even have to over eat them to gain weight if your diet is nearly heavily based around them. You won’t lose weight counting calories as long as these items are still on your diet.
Fats are actually not as bad as most people think. The correlation between fat and heart decease is something I still don’t understand. It has no real medical study backing and almost seems religious in nature (pure faith.) In combination with complex crabs they can buildup but it’s not because of fats, it’s because of what the crabs do to you that your body can’t process them properly.
It’s actually takes a lot of effort to gain weight if you only consume meats, fruits and vegetables.
Big clarification: some confuse this with “low carb” diets. That’s not how this goes. It’s not about eliminating all carbs; it’s about eliminating gluten and complex carbs. You should get your carb intake from fruit and vegetables, and most meals may actually not go down very well if they are entirely composed of meat and fat.
One last note: candy and granulated sugar are not mentioned here but are horrible for you. Get your sweet stuff from fruit like pears and kiwi. Oh and the stuff stores sell under the name of “yogurt” is either just candy or artificial chemical hell. Avoid that stuff.
Sources: The prices at the grocery store, the prices at fast foods and my wife who is a diabetes researcher.
Fats are actually not as bad for you as most people think. The correlation between fat and heart decease is something I still don’t understand. It has no real medical study backing and almost seem religious in nature (pure faith.) In combination with complex crabs they can buildup but it’s not because of fats, it’s because of the crabs.
It’s actually takes a lot of effort to gain weight if you only consume meats, fruits and vegetables.
Big clarification: some confuse this with “low carb” diets. That’s not how this goes. It’s not about eliminating all carbs; it’s about eliminating gluten and complex carbs. You should get your carb intake from fruit and vegetables, and most meals may actually not go down very well if they are entirely composed of meat and fat.
Sources: The prices at the grocery store, the prices at fast foods and my wife who is a diabetes researcher.
Re:Same as school exercise (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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.