Abstract P090: Oculus/PlayStation IV VR Game for Youth to Build Food and Drink Selection Skills

Abstract

Low-quality food and drink selection by today’s youth is well documented despite their ability to distinguish between low and high-quality foods. In addition, attention spans are short and youth are drawn to screens and gaming technology in our technology-focused culture. We are addressing the need to instill food and drink selection skills using a game-based behavioral intervention utilizing headset virtual reality (VR) technology. As a part of our Obesity Prevention project, we created Food Fight in VR. The virtual reality experience uses current PlayStation VR and Oculus headsets to offer an experience with high ecological validity by presenting high quality and accurate visual and auditory stimuli in a proper social and environmental context. In a realistic virtual world, the game immerses the young player in a believable world with altered game mechanics that control success and failure parameters. VR offers the young player an opportunity to experiment, try out new behaviors, fail, and build confidence. VR success then translates to real-world skills, feelings of empowerment, and improved selection behaviors. In our FoodFight Oculus or Playstation VR game, food cues bombard a young player wearing a virtual reality headset. They inspect each food or drink tossed at them. They quickly decide if the item is unhealthy (based on a diet they have chosen) and thus should be blocked (using a virtual tray), caught and thrown back, discarded, or hit away. Or, if they deem the food to be healthy, they grab it or pull it in with a food magnet and store it in the pantry or fridge for later. Visual cues, points, and active involvement make the process of selecting healthy foods and resisting unhealthy foods easy and fun. The game provides appropriate feedback for saving unhealthy food or rejecting healthy food. Eventually, they have collected enough food to build a healthy meal, win the game level, and proceed to the next level; winning and leveling up are strong motivators for this audience. In the long term, we seek to enhance internal control over the food selection process. Our short-term objectives are for the player to: 1) recognize healthy and unhealthy food, 2) reject unhealthy food/drink, 3) build confidence in rejecting unhealthy foods, and 4) recognize the foods required to build a balanced healthy meal consistent with a dietary guideline. Our future work involves expanding the game to highlight specific dietary requirements beyond the preparation of a single meal and include a wide range of diets such as Dash, Mediterranean, gluten-free, vegan, plant-based whole food, and vegetarian. Initial usability studies show a positive response and innovative use of game mechanics. A more robust evaluation is ongoing.