Aiming to help children overcome obesity and the rising health risks arising out of it, a Chennai-based company has launched a pediatric dietary mobile game app to help children with healthy food choices. The application has been designed by FriendsLearn and its founder Bhargav Shri Prakash says he was inspired to create something like this after he became a parent and saw how his children’s food habits were influenced by advertisements and were not particularly body-friendly habits. As such, he decided to do something about it and started developing the application some 11 years ago. Bhargav has named it Fooya!.
Speaking to news agency ANI, Bhargav said, “We’ve been working on it for past 11 yrs. We decided to engage children in a fun manner in this important topic.”
Tamil Nadu: A pediatric dietary game app launched to educate children on healthy food choices"We've been working on it for past 11 yrs. We decided to engage children in a fun manner in this important topic," says Bhargav Shriprakash, founder of FriendsLearn that developed app pic.twitter.com/D3btQKEQja
— ANI (@ANI) March 5, 2021
The company has an R&D office in San Francisco and their results from a trial of 104 children have shown how the application was able to successfully introduce kids to healthy food and lifestyle choices among them who were aged between 10 to 11 years.
Bhargav explains how the application also teached children to avoid processed food with the help of neuroscience approach to the subject. He also emphasizes on the need to introduce a fun way to explain the topics to ensure the children do not feel bored about it.
Bhargav reportedly told the news agency that he has worked with the John Hopkins University and their findings of the study have been a massive success. Their study, which has also appeared in the journal JMIR mHealth and uHealth, explains how just 20 minutes of the application can have
a positive effect on children.
Keeping the application as very relatable, the makers have used an avatar to fight against unhealthy foods that are represented by robots. It helps the children to help maintain good body shop and earn coins to unlock other stages. The idea that children are given is that if one eats healthy foods, they can move a lot and are slow and tired if they eat more calories or fatty food.
(With inputs from ANI)
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