HKU Bulletin January 2011 (Vol. 12 No. 1)

19 The number of Hong Kong children who are overweight is growing. HKU researchers are considering whether more active video games can make a difference. Game Play with a Purpose Ask a child to jog around the block and chances are they will moan, groan and drag their feet. But sit that child in front of a video game where they can jump, kick and fight Ninjas, and the response will be quite different. You may have difficulty making them stop. That obsessive attraction of video games and the potential to get children exercising without even realising it has led to a study on energy expenditure and video games by Dr Alison McManus, Associate Professor in the Institute of Human Performance, and PhD student Robin Mellecker. The study, one of the first in the world to look at this issue, hooked children aged six to twelve to a heart monitor and a calorimeter to measure oxygen consumption as they played games on a Japanese XaviX console. The games came in five-minute bursts and consisted of a bowling game, a running game involving Jackie Chan on a chase through Hong Kong’s streets, and a traditional seated game. The Jackie Chan game saw children expend energy equivalent to jogging. “Children do not easily sustain five minutes of moderate activity so what was surprising here was that when they did hit that high level of energy, they wanted to do it again. The game took over. This might be a valuable alternative for children who don’t want to do traditional exercise,” Dr McManus said. Further work with colleague Dr Cindy Sit showed that girls were just as attracted to the game as boys, although they were less intensive in their play. However, while the results have encouraging implications for battling excess weight gain in children (obesity among boys in Hong Kong has nearly doubled over the past decade from 14 per cent to 27 per cent), there is another factor to take into account: energy intake. The scholars separately tested the interaction between video games and energy (food) intake and found a much less positive outcome. Children in this experiment played X-Box games, either sitting or walking on a slow- moving treadmill, and were given free access to snacks while they played. They ended up snacking throughout the game play, whether walking or seated, with one child eating 1,000 calories worth of snacks in an hour. “A lot of literature says that if children have a controller in their hand, they will snack less. We now know that is not true. I was in the room the whole time. Nobody missed a beat when they were playing even the more complex games and snacking,” Ms Mellecker said. Still, despite the caveat on snacking, having children play active video games is better than no exercise at all. “The appealing thing about these games is they can be played safely at home and they can build some energy expenditure into each day. It’s easier than getting parents to take children out of their apartment to exercise facilities,” Dr McManus said. And getting children more active through whatever means has public health benefits. “Just look at what’s happened in the US, where overweight adults tend to have overweight children. The cycle is hard to break and there’s a huge cost in terms of health care,” Ms Mellecker said. This work has been published in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, International Journal of Pediatric Obesity and Appetite . Dr Alison Mary McManus (middle) and Robin Rochelle Mellecker (right) received the 2009 Research Output Prize presented by the then Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Wong (left). January 2011 Research