The Lancashire Evening Post reports videogame addiction is taking over the UK at an alarming rate. Its studies have shown more young people are skipping school and stealing money in order to support their habit. It even has an “expert” that declares two hours of gaming is the equivalent to doing a line of cocaine. As usual, parents are in no way responsible.

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.

Just when you thought the world was turning an evil eye towards video games, accusing it of converting children into violent thugs, rotting their brains and making them fat. Consoles like the Nintendo Wii have opened up a new way for the medical field to use the games to their advantage. With games being integrated into physical therapies that can not only improve a person’s hand-eye-coordination it may just help shed some pounds in childhood obesity.

According to an article published by the UK Press Association video games that engage children in any form of physical activity “may be an effective answer to childhood obesity…”

“You are fat,” the Wii Fit game stated matter-of-factly, as the world crumbled around a 10-year-old British girl, who had been excitedly standing on the game’s Balance Board peripheral until the heart-breaking pronouncement.

However, her father hasn’t come to terms with the game’s assessment of her stepdaughter’s body weight and refused to accept it. “She is a perfectly healthy, 4ft 9in tall 10-year-old who swims, dances and weighs only six stone,” the miffed father told the Daily Mail. Although he agreed to his stepdaughter being sturdily built, he didn’t accept that she was “fat.”

The game is under considerable fire from British obesity experts, who have…