'Food Hero' Competes for Kids' Health

By Elizabeth Cooney

The free app is competing in a contest initiated by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign (you can vote until Aug. 14), but it’s also part of a larger strategy to use social networking to improve health. Ben Reis, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues previously came up with apps that let your friends know when you give blood (I Saved a Life!) or get a flu shot (I Got the Flu Shot!). (You get the idea.) A future version of Food Hero would post your victories on your Facebook wall, for example.

Complete with stirring music and multiple levels, Food Hero is aimed at kids who are 9 to 12 years old. Its cartoon characters run, bike, or swim, but to do their best they must eat a balanced diet. Eat too little and they droop; eat too much and they almost explode. It’s not as easy as it looks, by the way.

The social networking component will be added over the next few months, Reis said, followed by pilot testing among kids.

“When you make personal medical decisions about lifestyle or medical care, often the most authoritative sources are your friends and family,” he said. “People spend so much time on social networks. Can we leverage that for good?”