Michelle Obama latest idea for fighting obesity in America via her Let's Move! anti-obesity campaign, is the Apps for Healthy Kids contest. Up to $40,000 in prizes will be awarded to the creators of iPhone apps that encourage good health. Their web site stresses that the apps are to be directed at "tweens" -- ages 9 to 12 -- even though few tweens have an iPhone, specially in the socio-economic groups where obesity most often presents itself.
Apps for Healthy Kids is accepting two types of apps: games and tools. Games, according to the web site, are apps that "educate through engaging the user in an entertaining experience." Wouldn't obese children and adults be better served if they stopped playing games on their iPhones and spent more time exercising outdoors?
As the White House spends taxpayer money on this anti-obesity app contest, unemployment remains just below 10% and the projected national debt is around $11 trillion. The passions of First Ladies are often arcane but Michelle Obama's obsession with weight brings the phrase "fiddling while Rome burns" to mind.
Note: One of the contest judges is Aneesh Chopra, the White House Technology Czar and former Managing Director for the Advisory Board Company, a health care think tank for hospitals and health systems that supports Obamacare. One of his jobs is to make the government more transparent. He doesn't actually have any technology experience other than getting the same job in Tim Caine's VA Governor's Office, but he has a B.A. in Health Policy, is a Morgan Stanley alumnus, a Mark Warner of Virginia protégé and an advocate of health care rationing.
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