Fun Ways to Learn about Food & Foodborne diseases

Mirrored from Aurametrix

Let me introduce E.coli (on the left) and Salmonella (on the right), pictured by GaintMicrobes company.

You can get acquainted with these guys even closer if you (or the food manufacturer) do not follow the safety rules.

You can learn more about it and from these fun games, some of which were presented at the 5th annual Games for Change Festival. and mentioned in the Mission to Learn blog.

Browser-based, Free Learning Games

Safe Food Park

Hey, hop on! The Food Safety Mobile is about to take a ride through SAFE FOOD PARK. Learn about invisible enemies that are always ready so strike If you are not careful when handling and preparing food it could make you and your family sick

Food Detectives Fight BAC

“The Food Detectives Fight BAC!® game gives kids a fun way to learn about foodborne illness. More and more, foodborne illness is making news headlines. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne illnesses in the United States affect millions of people and cause thousands of deaths every year. The CDC says 300,000 people are hospitalized every year.” From New Mexico State University.

The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detectives

“There has been a mysterious outbreak of unhealthy habits hitting too many boys and girls. If we don’t solve these cases, and fast, kids might not make the right food and exercise choices as they grow, and that could be trouble! All junior food detectives will get secret training on how to eat right and exercise. You can investigate fun games like Whack A Snack, Soccer, and Zap the TV. Plus you can print out classified clues on ways to be healthy, then share them with your parents, teachers, and pals.” From Kaiser Permanente. Teacher resources available.

Desktop/Free Learning Games

All of the following are free, though in most instances donations are encouraged.

Food Force
“As team rookie you have six missions to complete. Each mission represents a part of the process of delivering food aid to an area in crisis. The final mission shows you how food aid can help people rebuild their lives in the years following a disaster.” United Nations World Food Programme. Multiple languages. Teacher resources available.

Fatworld
“FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S. The game’s goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations. Existing approaches to nutrition advocacy fail to communicate the aggregate effect of everyday health practices. It’s one thing to explain that daily exercise and nutrition are important, but people, young and old, have a very hard time wrapping their heads around outcomes five, 10, 50 years away.”

Immune Attack
This game teaches immunology in a fun and engaging way that is different from the traditional classroom setting. For example, you can train monocytes to transmigrate out of the blood vessel network and pass into the connective tissue, train the macrophage to follow the chemical trail of C3as leading to the site of infection (the Pseudomonas bacteria), activate receptors to recognize enemies and watch the macrophage eat them.