DDR Coming To West Virginia Schools

Next Generation is reporting that Konami is bringing Dance Dance Revolution to 765 state public schools in West Virginia. The move is intended to counteract the growing youth obesity problem facing the United States. From the article: "'Bringing the health benefits and enjoyment that DDR provides to school children is a great way to combat childhood obesity that is caused by the sedentary lifestyle of today's kids,' said Konami's Clara Gilbert, director of business partnerships. 'DDR has been a proven success in schools and this program with the State of West Virginia demonstrates the positive effects that can come from making DDR a part of one's daily routine. This first-of-its-kind partnership will help us continue to demonstrate the benefits of DDR to consumers around the country.'" On one hand, that's awesome. On the other, if I was still in middle school, I think DDRing in front of middle school girls would be a sure way to cause permanent psychic scarring. Update: 01/25 21:34 GMT by Z : HTML is hard. Fixed link.

Link

[eldavojohn]

The story [sfgate.com] if you want it.

The original article

[bignickel]

Here's the original article [next-gen.biz]. I wonder if Massachusetts will take up the case, but insist that Stepmania [stepmania.com] be used instead...

Too Lazy

[CastrTroy]

If the kids are too lazy to play real sports (soccer, football, baseball, general active play rather than watching tv) then what makes these people think that the kids won't be too lazy to play DDR? Also, you can be really thin, but if you're eating junk food all the time, then you're still going to be unhealthy. They are fighting the problem in the wrong way. They should be getting kids to do more real activities, rather than relying on expensive equipment to make them healthy.

Re:Great....

[Anonymous Coward]

>Soccer and wrestling - not quiet on the level of Football, track and basketball.

Ah Yes. Will it simply be as popular as those two small insignificant sports, soccer. Which is played nearly everywhere. Or Wrestling which has been around since the first olympics.

Not quite as popular as Football, an American invented sport that has just been inveted in the last 100 years and is a derivative of a hugely popular world wide sport.

Nice analogy.

Re:DDR? 2/3 wrong letters

[CaptainPinko]

Well this is health education and I think if it can make a difference in people's lives its worth it. Frankly, I'm using it to get back into shape and am beginning to see results and lose weight.

Also, if we take the 3Rs strictly that precludes the teaching of algebra (algebra being beyond the scope of arithmetic), computer science,and trade class, art class, geography or any other science, literary criticism... and just about anything else worth knowing.

Frankly the only nutjob here is you.

Re:Will the obese play?

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse.

The obese people I know who play DDR counteract it entirely by letting their diet go to shit.

"I played a song of DDR, so I can have two quarterpounders, a large fries, a large shake, and a large cola instead of a granola bar!"

Yeah, um, no.

Fat people are fat because they choose to be fat. Making them play DDR isn't going to change that. What needs to happen is that society as a whole needs to decide to make it be completely socially unacceptable to be fat and force fat people to actually decide to take action and lose weight. As long as society allows people to be fat, people will be lazy and remain fat.

Exercise and obesity

[Budenny]

Exercise will certainly do some good. However, the problem has come from the two great uncontrolled dietary experiments the US has undertaken in the last 50+ years.

The first was the large scale introduction of vegetable oil, often hydrogenated, into the diet, to replace animal fats. There is not, and never was, any scientific basis for exposing mass populations to dietary elements which their evolutionary history could not have prepared them for.

The second was the large scale move to a high carbohydrate diet. it was called low-fat. Low-fat sounds reasonable and uncontroversial. High carbohydrate, which is what it was, has neve been shown to improve the health of any population, and would have been very controversial if labelled as what it was.

The results of the experiments are now coming in. The evidence is that the results are increases in heart disease and diabetes and obesity. The way to solve the problem would be partially exercise, but a more important step would be going back to the diet traditionally eaten around 1900, before the great increase in heart disease. This would be a diet fairly high in animal fats, generally eaten incidentally to eating meat and poultry or dairy products, and one with (complex rather than refined) carbohydrates accounting for a much smaller percentage of calories than today. We would eat grass fed meat, fish and eggs, with fresh vegetables and butter on them, and relatively coarse, though not whole grain, bread. Olive oil would be used in cooking and salad. There would be a total lack of polyunstaturated and hydrogentated vegetable oil, and little or no refined sugar.

Exercise is fine, but exercise while eating faddish garbage is not going to solve the problem.