Abstract
Background: Suboptimal diet is a concern for adults due to the adverse effects poor diets have on chronic diseases. Nutrition education is an important factor that can encourage healthy nutrition behaviours. Unfortunately, current education methods are not engaging and innovative ways to facilitate learning. Serious games (SG) are informative and interactive programs that are designed to promote learning and behaviour change within the user. SG have shown to be an effective and engaging tool for increasing the nutrition knowledge of children; however, there has been minimal research conducted that evaluates nutrition-focused SG for the adult population.
Objective: This study aimed to assess whether nutrition-focused, mobile and web-based serious games can increase nutrition knowledge among adults ≥18 years old.
Design: Scoping Review. A systematic literature search was preformed in January 2021 in four online databases: Medline, Scopus, Google Scholar and Pub Med. Once studies were collected, two researchers independently used the inclusion criteria to screen the title/abstracts and the full-text of the studies. Data were extracted from eligible articles and analyzed by one researcher.
Results: In total, five articles that were published between 2012-2019 met the inclusion criteria and were included in the scoping review. Data extraction revealed that 80% (n=4/5) of the nutrition-focused SG were web-based. Nutrition knowledge metrics from the SG included information about caloric intake, food groups, nutrients, salt consumption, nutrition quality and needs. Results from the studies showed that there was an increase in nutrition knowledge after the SG was played, measured by questionnaires, surveys and user’s performance throughout the SG.
Conclusions: Evidence from this scoping review demonstrates that nutrition-focused SG may increase nutrition knowledge of adults ≥18 years old. Further research is warranted for determining whether SG are a tool that can be used to improve the nutritional outcomes of adults.
