New Dinner Tray Makes A Game Out Of Eating Vegetables
They may not have the allure of a fresh cake or sweet candy, but vegetables are a much bigger part of a healthy diet. Getting kids to buy into that isn’t exactly the easiest task, unless they’re forced to live in a sugar-free home. But new technology is out to provide a much smoother alternative; remarkably, the power of video games is set to reach the dinner table.
Rodrigo Gorosterrazu struggled to get his daughter to eat her veggies time and time again, only to have a brainstorm one fateful day. Thanks to that, he and his creative firm designed Yumit, a dinner set that measures the amount of food a child eats. Lights and sounds push kids to keep eating, but there’s more to it than spectacle; the stats can transfer to an app via Bluetooth, and potentially interact with other games. Simply put, it can reward good eating habits with rewards in a kid’s game of choice.
That’s in theory, of course. Right now, Yumit is in the prototype phase, so there’s no telling how much will change before it hits the market. Likewise, games will have to adopt the tray’s reward system in some fashion for the full effect. Then again, one could argue that any invention that keeps veggies from going down the drain already has “the full effect” locked down.
