By Ryan Olson

Want to lose weight? Play a video game. That’s the message from a counterintuitive new study by researchers at the renown Mayo Clinic.

The study by the Rochester, Minnesota-based medical center is the first to scientifically measure the amount of energy children spend playing video games and the results show that games designed to get kids moving around could become effective tools for fighting flab.

The study comes amid growing concern that TV watching and video-game playing have contributed to a surge in obesity among children. A 2004 report issued by the American Heart Association said the prevalence of obesity in children aged 6 to 11 hit 15.8 percent in 2002, up from 4.2 percent in the 1960s. The percentage of overweight adolescents jumped to 16.1 percent from 4.6 percent during the same time period.

Mayo researchers, however, designed their study to differentiate between traditional video games, in which players manipulate controls while sitting down, and games that require children to move around while they play.

Children playing Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)—a popular title produce by Konami in which players move to music on a touch-sensitive pad to score points—got the most intense workout, with obese kids burning more than six times as many calories as they did sitting still and watching television or playing more traditional video games. DDR comes in a home version and arcade game format.

Kids using the EyeToy accessory for Sony’s PlayStation 2—which puts players in a virtual game where they must move to catch objects—spent three times as much energy as they did when playing sedentary titles.

The Mayo study, published in the current issue of the medical journal Pediatrics and also supported by the National Institutes of Health, tested 25 children, 15 of which were of normal weight and 10 of which were mildly obese. Kids were examined while sitting and watching television, playing a traditional video game, playing two types of video games requiring activity, and watching TV while walking on a treadmill.

The results showed kids who sat down while watching TV or playing traditional video games spent far less energy than those playing one of the video games requiring activity. Walking on the treadmill tripled energy expenditures for the lean group, while obese kids burned five times as many calories.

Sedentary Life

The two biggest things keeping kids at home and on the couch are video games and television, said Mayo spokesman Bob Nellis. For Mayo researchers, studying energy expenditures while playing video games was a logical extension of this phenomenon, he said. While the study examined a mere 25 children, Mayo believes the results are compelling enough to warrant further studies using randomized trials.

According to the World Health Organization, there are now more than 1 billion overweight adults worldwide, with at least 300 million of them obese. Such conditions pose major risks for diseases including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and certain types of cancer.

While Konami had no direct involvement in the Mayo study, company officials contacted Friday explained how DDR has really taken off as a fitness tool. “[It] has definitely grown beyond the video game audience,” said Marc Franklin, the company’s director of public relations. “It’s captured the attention of parents and children interested in keeping active.”

In January 2006, Konami announced a three-year deal with the state of West Virginia to bring DDR to more than 750 schools. The company also works with 24 Hour Fitness and YMCA locations, which offer the dance pads as a new way to exercise (see Video Game Fights Fat).