World Health Organization Blames Games for Childhood Obesity

[FinalFreak16]

Blaming Games? Thats rich. I'm pretty sure its all this health and safety bullcrap.

My 9 year old sister isnt allowed to run around in the playground at school because its dangerous. Every lunchtime the kids stand around, eating their snacks and talking. Theres your bloody problem!!

 

[FinalHeart95]

Well sure, the less time you spend outside, the fatter you get. DUH. The key is to make your kids go outside.

So the cause isn't the games, it's the parents, and the parents use games as the excuse.

 

[Brian Hendershot]

(Read:Sarcasm)
Wow someone thinks video games are the making kids fat? Whats next Captain science? Maybe video games cause violence in children too?!!

Remember the good old days when gamers were perceived as skinny, bespectacled acne covered kids with no friends?

 

[cobra_ky]

Video Games are as much to blame for childhood obesity as cars are for drunk driving accidents.

 

[Brian Hendershot]

Blaming Games? Thats rich. I'm pretty sure its all this health and safety bullcrap.

My 9 year old sister isnt allowed to run around in the playground at school because its dangerous. Every lunchtime the kids stand around, eating their snacks and talking. Theres your bloody problem!!

At my old grade school the kids now have a whole hour to play outside. Back when I was there--about seven years ago--we had a total of twenty minutes.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is actually pretty plausible. I would have finished my homework and would be walking around in town with some mates instead of sitting in my house drinking soda right now if the escapist, facebook and youtube were not around. I'm glad they are- but they do make me more sedentary.

 

[LordChhaya]

I really don't know what the W.H.O. are on about, a sedate life is the best one you can have everyone knows Exercise is bad for you.

 

[Yopaz]

Well duh. Sitting down without physical activity makes your kid fat. That's not science nor new. Of course that doesn't have to be gaming related, but since gamers usually do sit when they play rather than run a marathon there is a connection with obesity. Of course this is just one reason, meals are important too. Does the kids snack a lot? Who let's them have snacks? How healthy are the meals?
These are 3 parent related reasons and most kids don't earn money for the games so that's kinda 4 parents reaons. I spent most of my childhood inside playing video games and despite that I was severely underweight and yet I did eat a lot at every meal. I did live too far away from any store to go buy candy and I did save most my money for games. We rarely ate unhealthy fast food.
As usual games can only be blamed partially, but I would say technology in general is the reason. Farmers need machines they didn't need 100 or even 20 years ago.

 

[Ryokai]

The solution is to get kids to exercise more and eat less. I game 8 hours a day, and am in good fitness (can bench 220, run for hours), and am in the process of losing some extra pounds (20 lost, 10-20 more to go). The solution is a revolutionary new diet called getting off my ass and making myself work out, as well as forcing myself to eat less. It's simple.

 

[Invaderbrim]

Well, what else is new?

 

[JEBWrench]

The conclusion here is false...it is a factor in the overall situation not the actual problem the real problem is parents who don't be a parents. This argument is just as stupid as this one group trying to get Ronald McDonald dropped as the spokesperson for McDonalds because of the same reasons.

The conclusion here isn't the conclusion actually made by the WHO. It's spun by MCV. The WHO said video gaming were a factor in the sendentary lifestyle. The sendentary lifestyle itself is the culprit.

Of course, I don't know if it was necessary to say "Sitting on your ass doing nothing makes people fat".

 

[asinann]

Yay, the WHO is excusing parents for their overly-permissive behavior. The kids wouldn't be obese if the parents would make them get off their lazy asses and take the fucking McDonalds out of their mouths. When I was a kid McDonalds was something eaten when we didn't have time to cook or as a reward for something, not for dinner 4 nights a week.

 

[Abedeus]

Well then I blame the incurable, benign diseases - asthma (especially the exercise one or allergy-born), allergies (okay, you can cure it with bone marrow ablation and transplant, but who in their mind would waste it on a single person with allergy...) and dozens of other reasons kids dislike or can't practice sports. I tried swimming, because it was good for my allergy - I can't because my asthma makes me tire a LOT faster. I tried karate, my nephrologist said I can't because my blood pressure is too high. I tried riding the bike, and while I love it, I can't ride more than an hour - again, asthma - and I can't ride at ALL during the spring months, especially May and July - allergies.

So please, WHO, shut the hell up and give money to cure allergies and asthmas.

...What?

 

[Stone Wera]

Didn't you guys put up a news story that said there wasn't a solid link between videogames and obesity?

Bleh, I hate it when people blame everything thats not the real problem. But I guess thats life...

Still sucks though.

Agreed.

People just spin barrel wtih a bunch little pieces of paper with pictures on them, and whichever they draw out is the new scapegoat.

Not literally of course, but that's pretty much the way things are.

I think they just have trouble imagining that children think for themselves, and decide not to go outside.

Because beating a wheel down a dirt road with a stick doesn't yield the same thrill it did back in the day.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

I can't argue, gaming is part of the problem. It isn't the whole of the picture though, corn syrup has far worse effects then gaming I would bet, but it is part of it all. Of course, in this day and age everyone keeps looking for a single reason things are messed up and with that a silver bullet to fix all the problems. Much easier to think these complex issues are in fact a simple problem with a simple fix.

The bigger issue is, as someone above me pointed out, the parents who shovel this crap into their children then plop them down in front of the TV.

 

[asinann]

Problem with that overweight is selected by the BMI a terribad way and not accurate.

According to their BMI's nearly every NFL player, MMA fighter, professional "wrestler," body builder, and construction worker are morbidly obese. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime was morbidly obese according to the BMI scale. The BMI scale doesn't take anything into accound other than height and weight, and that's why reputable doctors only use it in conjunction with other tests to measure obesity.

 

[Aeshi]

Well gaming probably doesn't make you as fast as TV or other such activities since your brain is constantly using up energy thinking what to do next.