ABSTRACT
Over the last 20 years obesity has trebled and on current trends, it is set to become the number one cause of death in UK in the next 10 to 15 years overtaking smoking (World Health Organization, 2005). Worldwide over a billion adults and children are overweight (World Health Organization, 2004) and some experts have predicted that the current generation of children are likely to have shorter life expectancies than their parents because of obesity (House of Commons Health Committee, 2004). On present trends half of all children in England could be obese by 2020 (Lobstein et al., 2005). A major concern with regard to childhood obesity is that obese children tend to become obese adults, facing increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many other chronic diseases (Braddon et al., 1986). In fact, there is twice as much chance that an obese child will become an obese adult, than a lean child. A major cause of weight gain is the worryingly high levels of sedentary behaviour. The rise in sedentary behaviour is believed to be due to the decrease of physical activity within the transportation, domestic and recreational domains (Beaglehole et al., 2002). This behaviour is exacerbated by the influence of pastimes requiring no physical exertion, such as television viewing and playing computer games. Consequently there is an increasing need to develop solutions to enhance physical play for a young “electronic savvy” user group.
