Playing to Change: Games, Comics, Fruit and Vegetables

Getting children to eat more fruit and vegetables has been challenging¹. New methods are needed to get past student resistance to these behaviors. Electronic games are a medium that engage large numbers of children on almost a daily basis, often for several hours², and most children report enjoying playing games³.

Squire’s Quest! was an interactive multimedia computer game in which behavior change procedures were inserted to promote eating more fruit and vegetables4. Ten sessions of approximately 25 min each were offered twice a week for 5 weeks. Each session addressed skills (e.g. decision making, recipe preparation, problem solving), knowledge, goal setting, food self schema and related components⁴. These behavior change components were inserted within a fun storyline wherein the child agreed to become a knight to help King Cornwell and Queen Nutritia fight invaders who were destroying the kingdom by destroying the fruit and vegetables, the source of energy.

Twenty six elementary schools were recruited to participate; 1578 4^th grade students participated. Schools were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Four days of diet assessment were conducted before and after the 5 week intervention. At the end of 5 weeks, the treatment group was eating one more serving of fruit or vegetables per day than the control group, after controlling for baseline differences⁴. Similar kinds of programs have been developed for at risk of overweight 8 year old African American girls after a 4 week summer day camp program⁵; and for a Boy Scout 5 A Day badge program⁶.
Electronic games provide attractions to engage the child and focus their attention; and provide a medium into which behavior change principles and procedures can be inserted⁷. Electronic games offer an important channel for reaching large numbers of children. We are only in the earliest stages of learning how to capitalize on these strengths for promoting fruit and vegetable intake.