Do you want to help explain the effects of healthy or unhealthy eating and lifestyles to children – while having lots of fun yourself!? Then have a look at Yoobot.

Yoobot lets you create a ‘mini you’ which involves creating an animated version of yourself. You upload a photograph of yourself and Yoobot asks you to highlight your eyes, mouth and the shape of your face and build. Then at a mouse-click your Yoobot is ‘hatched’.

Once born then you can plan the hatchlings daily routine; breakfast, dinner, tea and play activities and exercise. These daily routines then can be analysed – especially through a ‘Time Warp’ function which will reveal the possible effects of that lifestyle on your Yoobot.

I created the Duffybot and stuffed him full of a diet of cakes, buns and cola along with a strict exercise regime of watching TV and listening to music. I’m dreading to see how Duffybot turns out at age 70 – if indeed he survives that long – because I’ve grown quite fond of the handsome chap!

The British Heart Foundation have created Yoobot and does make some qualifications about it which are reproduced below, but this is a novel way to engage children on healthy living issues! It allows children to experiment with a range of diets and lifestyle and could be one of the ways that child obesity issues might be more effectively tackled.

“Yoobot is designed to allow a child to experiment on their mini version of themselves with a range of diets and exercise regimes. The nutritional content and physical benefits of exercise are modeled on real data in order to give the experience a degree of realism. However, in order to clearly link certain actions with health implications we have exaggerated reality in order to emphasise the key points we would like users to understand. We have also had to simplify risk factors for heart disease, and to some extent alter the progression of the process of heart disease in order to not dilute the message of healthy eating and physical activity. The Yoobot does not get heart failure, or angina for instance, neither does it die from accidents, suicide or other disease processes. Overall, the British Heart Foundation has endeavoured to make Yoobot an engaging and scientifically based educational tool.

Disclaimer: Yoobot is a game based in reality but some information has been exaggerated or simplified in order to get the key messages across clearly.” From www.yoobot.co.uk ‘Grown up stuff’