Game to `promote obesity'
30apr06
CHILDHOOD obesity experts have criticised a Federal Government decision to give $1.5 million to a company to create "the ultimate computer gaming experience".
Sydney firm Emotiv Systems has been awarded the Commercial Ready innovation grant to help develop a headset that reads brainwaves.
It is designed to allow users to steer the game with their thoughts – not their fingers.
But critics say it is hypocritical for the Government to fund projects designed to keep kids on the couch, while spending millions in advertising campaigns to get them off their backsides.
Early Childhood Australia deputy national president Ros Cornish said childhood obesity was growing and some parents were increasingly using gaming units as childcare substitutes.
She said the money could be better spent prising kids off the couch and on to the sporting field.
"You would start to question the wisdom of that (grant), if this is going to be another encouragement for children not to be active," she said.
Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity executive director Tim Gill supported the $200 million-a-year innovation grants program.
But Dr Gill said it would be good to see similar funding levels for tackling childhood obesity.
"Encouraging children to play more computer games is not what ASSO would like to see the Government doing," he said.
Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett, a Type One diabetes sufferer, is pushing his Government to confront childhood obesity.
He is critical of "the 21st century culture where kids are being encouraged to live a more sedentary lifestyle, with TVs, computers and video games".
But he defended the games grant and said it had to be seen in context of existing Federal Government initiatives on childhood obesity, such as the $6 million Get Moving advertising campaign and the $90 million Active After-school Communities program.
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