With the fear of child obesity steadily on the rise in California, Anthem Blue Cross and the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo joined forces to improve the health and physical well-being of children in California.

The idea for the project started when Dr. Harvinder Sareen, director of clinical programs for Anthem Blue Cross, visited the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo with an idea according to Bill Locker, CEO/President of BGC of Camarillo.

“She asked about the idea and we said we were very interested. We then did some research on exergaming and thought it would be a great program for our kids…

If you are playing the EA Sports Active games on your Wii, you may be satisfying the American College of Sports Medicine‘s (ACSM) guidelines for an active lifestyle.

A study released on June 2, 2010, conducted by Dr. John Porcari of the University of Wisconsin concluded that these games passed the fitness guidelines of ACSM.

ACSM recommends…

Zombie Cow Studios, the developer for Privates feels Microsoft’s approval is not crucial to the game’s release. The studio feels that Privates pushes the boundaries of what Microsoft will approve, but its game should be tame enough to pass approval. Even if it’s rejected Privates will still be released for free on PC.

Your health isn’t a game, but keeping track of it can be. Bayer has released a device in Europe known as Didget that comes with a fun program designed to encourage diabetic children to keep track of their blood glucose levels. Surprisingly, this new program is Knock ‘Em Downs: World’s Fair, a DS “game,” and the Didget doubles as a peripheral that can be fitted into the GBA slot on DS and DS lite systems. It’s quite ingenious, really.

The Didget alone is a blood glucose meter that can be used to check blood sugar throughout the day. But, it can also be used with the DS game Knock ‘Em Downs: World Fair to help encourage kids to keep checking their blood sugar daily. If kids keep up with their testing, they’ll unlock new levels and items in the game. You just plug the Didget and the DS cartridge into your system, and you’re all set.

At the moment, the Didget is available via two means…

Electronic Arts’ The Sims 3 has just won an award for depicting vegetarians and vegans in a positive light.

The award, called a Proggy, is granted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and this year The Sims 3 took the honors in the Most Animal-Friendly Game of 2009 category.

In the game, players can choose to create a vegetarian character and adopt a meat-free lifestyle. Vegetarian characters in the game have a selection of foods according to their needs. They can even enjoy snacks like tofu hot dogs or different types of salads.

If by some mistake or someone else’s mischief a vegetarian character eats meat, it will get sick. If they stick to their diets, vegetarian characters age more slowly and live longer lives.

Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus has been granted endorsement from the United Kingdom’s Department of Health. In a move that has surprised many, now Wii Fit Plus will be allowed to use the logo of the Change4Life campaign in its advertisements and stores – and probably on the product itself – beginning next year (2010).

The Change4Life campaign is a program sponsored by the UK’s government aimed at promoting an active lifestyle and a healthy diet. Now Nintendo will join other major companies including Pepsi and Cadbury providing funds to support the campaign.

According to the latest inclusion in Nintendo’s Personal Trainer “game” series, I am not a fat, lazy slob. Instead, I am as active as a Daytime Deer and, some days, an Evening Owl.

Thank you, Personal Trainer: Walking. You make me feel thin…

If you thought listening to the disclaimers at the end of a commercial for medicine or reading the warning labels on the side of a cigarette pack is funny, then get a load of this.

I read the report posted on CNet by Don Reisinger which indicates that on January 7, 2009, Joe Baca, a democratic representative of California, introduced the H.R.231: The Video Game Health Labeling Act of 2009 bill to 111th Congress requesting to make it mandatory that video games that have received a rating for violence to display the following warning:

WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior.

I thought it was funny. At first…

According to a recent article published in the SouthTown Star and written by GateHouse News Service, online gamers may have been wrongly stereotyped.

Of the 7,000 online gamers researchers interviewed who played EverQuest 2, a MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game), they are not the overweight rotund teenage boys most people once thought they were…

It turns out that all the way back in 1987, a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was tricking its unsuspecting users into exercise routines. Bandai’s Dance Aerobics is the spiritual predecessor to Nintendo’s Wii Fit and natural movement.

The game features a few modes of following an instructor’s robotic stomping pattern that you repeat on a Power Pad accessory…