FitWits: Eating healthy is all its cracked up to be, says CMU and Eat’n Park

Elvis Presley has re-entered the building – this time with a peanut-butter hairdo.

He’s been re-dubbed Elvis Pretzley, and re-dipped (none of that processed cheese sauce for him), thanks to FitWits, a new collectible character card and text-messaging game at Eat’n Park designed to get parents and kids talking about healthy eating — and acting on the idea too.

“Kids have so many negative characters in their daily lives,” says Kristin Hughes, associate professor of design at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design, who leads the Fitwits team there. Hughes means negative food-pushing characters, of course, such as the sugary cereal shills populating grocery store shelves and TV commercials. The new FitWits characters, with their jokes, riddles, quizzes and recipes, may attract kids to multiple messages about healthy foods.

There’s three-strawberry-headed Berry S’Mores, promoting a yogurt-and-berry variation on the campfire snack, or Phil and Spill, the taco twins, plus the Queen of Wheat and Sunny Yolk. FitWits worked with local fifth-grade classes to create the creatures. As for Elvis Pretzley, “I’m not sure how that one came about,” Hughes says. But at least the youngsters may recognize the name from Penguins hockey games, if not ancient vinyl.

Kids can also use text-messaging to help Elvis Pretzley choose his meals while on the road during his singing career – presumably so he doesn’t turn into a soft pretzel, wearing a salt-covered cape.

Also part of the FitWits team are UPMC St. Margaret Family Health Centers, The Heinz Endowments (which funded this anti-obesity effort with a $125,000 grant), Open Science Initiative (which created the text message game), and Tropo (which is donating text-messaging services).

Hughes is confident about the program’s future impact. “The characters provide a level of comfort and ease for a parent and child to talk about the idea of healthy eating,” she says. “I think that’s the success of the program.”

Writer: Marty Levine

Source: Kristin Hughes, FitWits