Wired reports on The Fantastic Food Challenge, a videogame created to inform and educate Food stamps recipients on food-related habits. For those not familiar with this US system, it is basically a conspiracy from the richest nation on Earth to keep their poor fat and unhappy, instead of encouraging a Marxist revolution or some other structural change that would help those in real need. Now that I have lost your attention (and probably casted some serious doubt on my sanity, if any was left) let me go on. I got this link from Slashdot, where the usual Anonymous Coward wondered if videogames was the right way to convey these ideas, since supposedly people on Food stamps cannot afford a computer. Well, of course, that is not the case for many reasons. Slums all over South America have TV antennas (sometimes in Brazil I've even seen satellite dishes). A friend how worked on a hotline for helping people in desperate financial situations (people who, for some reaon, found themselves not being able, say, to pay for food) always asked the same question: Have you cancelled your cable TV subscription? Most of the times, the answer is no. Of course, I do not want to sound like a right-wing wacko who claims that all the poor people out there are really rich, but the truth is that I would not be suprised that many Food Stamps recipients would have a computer at home (also keep in mind that several charities will give old PCs to the poor). Of course, I haven't seen the games, but sounds like an interesting strategy for me. From the article's description, the games sound like right on target, too. What troubled me were the last two paragraphs, about a different Medieval game designed by some medical researchers teaches kids about fruits and vegetables. Medieval? Probably the doctors know a lot about nutrition, but the description leaves some serious doubts about their gaming knowledge. Good intentions, thou. Anyway, here's the story

Update: This CNN story includes some extra information about those two games, including a screenshot.