February 11, 2009
Lanningham-Foster finds new, interactive ways to get people moving
Activity-promoting video games a rising trend in fitness for kids, adults
Lorraine Lanningham-Foster, a new member of Iowa State's food science and human nutrition faculty, demonstrates a video game for the Nintendo Wii console. Lanningham-Foster is researching the calorie-burning potential of what she calls "activity-promoting video games," which she believes could offer an effective way to fight obesity in children. |
By
Scott Schrage
After cruising your office’s crowded parking lot in the hopes of finding a spot, you finally settle for the street curb and resign yourself to a five-minute walk. As you stride through the front door, you notice the elevator is out-of-order and head for the stairs.
Most of us see these as minor annoyances, trivial incidents in everyday life. Lorraine Lanningham-Foster thinks they’re NEAT.
Lanningham-Foster, a recent addition to Iowa State’s food science and human nutrition faculty, is exploring routine physical activity – what researchers call Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT – and how it relates to obesity and body weight.
“NEAT [consists of] the things that we do throughout our day that we don’t really consider to be exercise. Yet we can burn a lot of calories by doing things differently,” Lanningham-Foster said. “Our environments and societies have changed over the last 50 years, during which we’ve also experienced this huge increase in obesity. We have so many mechanized devices and things to make our lives easier, but as a result of that, we probably don’t move as much.”
While working as a postdoctorate researcher for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Lanningham-Foster found that subjects who manually washed dishes and clothes burned far more calories than their machine-dependent counterparts.
“That was a fun but also an interesting way of showing [that] yes, indeed, we would burn more calories if we went back to some of these less mechanized ways of doing things,” she said. “To think that you’d wash your clothing by hand [makes you wonder], ‘Who would do that?’ But there are still people all over the world who do that.”
Lanningham-Foster also compared the average commuting distances of Rochester residents in 1950 and today. After converting those distances into energy expenditure, she estimated that current residents conserve 100 calories more per day than they did in 1950.
If you think that’s a trivial difference, think again. At the same time Lanningham-Foster and her colleagues published their results, the president of the American Society of Nutrition published an independent study suggesting that the current obesity trend may be explained by that same disparity of just 100 calories.
“Over time, that 100-calorie imbalance could really contribute to people putting on that extra five, 10, 15 pounds a year,” she said.
As a mother of two young children, Lanningham-Foster has also become interested in investigating the factors behind childhood weight gain.
“Even though the level of obesity in children is lower than what it is in adults … they’ve actually had a sharper increase in the last 10 [to] 15 years,” she said. “So I decided that I wanted to venture into the realm of understanding physical activity, diet and obesity in children.”
Lanningham-Foster’s previous exploration of NEAT ties in nicely with her newfound research focus.
“A kid doesn’t get up in the morning and say, ‘Man, I need to go to the gym today, because last night I had that extra slice of cake.’ They just want to have fun and play and be kids,” said Lanningham-Foster. “I look at the activities they engage in as NEAT activities.”
It seems only natural, then, that Lanningham-Foster would investigate a time-honored childhood pastime that continues to grow in popularity: video gaming. She is particularly interested in looking at how traditional, sit-down gaming compares with an emerging industry trend.
“We have all these newer versions of video games – what I call activity-promoting video games – like ‘Dance Dance Revolution,’” she said. “The biggest one right now, of course, is the Nintendo Wii [console].”
Lanningham-Foster has already published a study demonstrating that children who play “Dance Dance Revolution” burn two to three times more calories than those who play a sedentary game. She is currently conducting research designed to determine whether children – and their families – will consistently play the Nintendo Wii when given the opportunity.
“I’m not proposing that video games replace kids going out to play and being in sports,” Lanningham-Foster said. “But there are a lot of issues relative to whether parents think it’s safe for their kids to go out and play; there are weather-related issues; there are lots of pressures because of parents’ really busy work schedules. What that means is that sometimes kids have [fewer] opportunities to go out and play.
“Basically, I’m [looking] at an activity that’s pretty fun for kids – and also for adults – and trying to better understand it,” she said. “I think that promoting activity[-based] video games could be a good thing.”
