Again, the devil is in the details. I was curious when I read on Shapely Prose about the new The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective game by Scholastic and Kaiser Permanente that is supposed to teach kids good health habits and the title makes it sound like a fun game, which it is not.
Being a good detective myself, I decided to play the game and investigate. When I began the game I was surprised that when you click on a child’s card to start the case, all of the children shown have some “bad habit” that is identified on the cards, like “Eats Too Much” or “Gets Tired Too Easily.” This seems like a simple tactic to get the player into the game, but EVERY child has a bad habit. There is no model of what a ‘good, healthy child’ is supposed to look like. This simply encourages the children playing the game to be judgmental about the characters based on surface assessments. Maybe Matthew is really tired all the time because he has severe anemia and Antonia just watches from the sidelines because she suffers from depression. A good detective would probably learn more about the child than the fact that Matthew’s problems will all be solved if he just does jumping jacks at a super human speed.
This is just more of the “you will never be good enough” messages that are spouted by mainstream media. They might as well have included a picture of a “heroine chic” Kate Moss as a role model. The main message is fine –eat right and exercise- it’s the way it is implemented that’s creepy.
Of course, I want my kids to be healthy, but I also don’t want them to have a screwed up fear of food or a strange sense of entitlement that they can tell everyone they see that they know how to make their life better. And on top of all that, it isn’t even a good game!
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