Caloric Consequences

Caloric Consequences

No material from this website can be used without written permission from the authors: Teri Little, Aaron Zachmeier, and Sarah Baha.

Instructional Objective

The learners will learn the following:

The average office worker constantly faces scenarios in which eating and drinking are unavoidable.
Most of the food the average office worker encounters on an average day is alarmingly high in calories.
Even when food and drink are unavoidable, there are often options, and even when all of the options are bad, there is usually a “least bad” option.
Calories add up quickly.
Excess calories eventually cause weight gain.
It takes an extraordinary amount of exercise to burn calories.

Learners & Context of Use

Caloric Consequences is designed for adults 21 and over, and specifically for those who work in offices or office-like environments.

Caloric Consequences is for use in offices and adult nutrition classes to promote Health Awareness. The game is designed to be played multiple times by the same group of people. Discussions about everyday food choices and their consequences would take place both before and after the game.

Object of the Game

The goal of the game is to have the fewest calories after moving around the board one time. Each player must reach the finish, or “Lights Out,” and the player with the fewest calories at “Lights Out” is the winner.

Game Materials

Game board
Cards

1. Breakfast

2. Coffee Break

3. Snack

4. Lunch

5. Happy Hour

6. Dinner

7. Free Time

One die
Game pieces
Calorie tabulation notebooks
Pencils

To see pictures of the board and pieces click on the links below.

Game Board Game Pieces Game Setup

To PLAY Caloric Consequences click on the following links.

Game Board Game Cards

Time Required

Caloric Consequences takes less than five minutes to setup. The regular version of the game will take 15–30 minutes to play. It is not recommended that the game be carried out over multiple play periods.

The Game

Caloric Consequences

OBJECT: The object of Caloric Consequences is to get through a day of meals and activities (from Wake Up and Smell the Coffee to Lights Out) with the fewest total calories.

SETUP: Place the cards in the appropriate places on the board and distribute one notepad, one pencil, and one game-piece to each player. The game is for 2–4 players, ages 21 and up.

RULES:

1. All players roll the die. The player with the highest roll goes first, then the turn passes to the right.

2. All players start on Wake Up & Smell the Coffee.

3. The active player rolls the die once during a turn and moves his or her piece according to the number indicated.

4. The player to the left of the active player draws a card from the stack that corresponds to the space the active player lands on and reads the scenario and the options, NOT the calories.

5. The active player MUST choose one of the options. (It can be assumed that all of the food and drink options on a card are of the same serving size.)

6. The inactive player reveals the caloric value of the active player’s choice, and the active player records that value on his or her notepad. (Each player should total his or her calories after each turn. Players may use calculators.) The inactive player then reads the remaining caloric values.

7. If a player lands on Free Time and chooses an activity to do right now, he or she MUST physically complete that activity.

8. Play repeats according to the steps above.

9. The first player to reach Lights Out deducts 100 calories.

10. The game ends when all players reach Lights Out. An exact roll of the die is NOT necessary to reach Lights Out.

11. To Win: The player with the lowest number of calories wins.

12. In the case of a tie, the winner can be determined with one of the following methods: flip a coin, roll the die, pushup contest, arm-wrestling, rock-paper-scissors, thumb-war, draw straws, or staring contest.

OPTIONAL: Players may calculate the excess calories they consumed in a day and estimate how much weight they would gain in a year if they made the same choices in life that they made in the game with the equations below:

total calories – 2,000 = excess daily calories

excess daily calories x 365 ¸ 3,500 = yearly weight gain

LONG GAME: Play can be lengthened by circling the board more than once.

CARD GAME: To play as a card game, players take turns reading cards to each other, reading one card per turn, going in order from Breakfast to Dinner. Players choose options and calculate calories as in regular play.

Caloric values for food and drink are from CalorieKing (http://www.calorieking.com/). Caloric values for physical activity are from Fitness Partner Connection Jumpsite (http://www.primusweb.com/fitnesspartner/jumpsite/calculat.htm).

Design Process

Synopsis:

We were eager to get started and it didn't matter that we hadn't learned the process of designing a game. That was our first mistake, not our eagerness, but our hastiness. Simply waiting to begin would have saved us a lot of time and frustration. Technically we “designed” three games before we were done. The final game, “Caloric Consequences,” was especially satisfying to create because of the trials we went through to get to it.

Our first thought was to make a game that could be used in Educational Technology classes at SDSU, but the design turned out to be boring and trite. From there we brainstormed for two different types of games—one on nutrition and one on STDs. Deciding we had more ideas to pull from the latter topic, we moved forward on the nutrition game. This started out as a game for families to play to increase their knowledge of healthy food choices. The scoring and some of the basic concepts for this game were such that when we tried to explain it is class we realized it wasn't workable.

Instead of starting from scratch once more, we simply changed the target group and narrowed the focus on some of the concepts. The game became something that adults, working in corporate cultures, could play to learn about the caloric challenges they face every day. Our game was simple and fun to play based on our playing it as a team. However, upon using our classmates to play test, we determined we had left a crucial element up to chance. Based on the rules as they were written, we had made it possible for no learning to occur at all. Luckily all that was necessary in that case was to add a few lines to the rules.

The biggest lesson we learned from this is we need to learn the process before we can make something worthwhile. Had we started with the process and gone through the proper steps, we would have saved a lot of frustration. We will definitely carry that lesson with us to the next design.

To see our individual reflections, click on the links below.

Aaron - Reflection

Teri - Reflection

Sarah - Reflection

References

Games

Monopoly
Trivial Pursuit
Life

Books & Journals

Clark, R. C. (1989). Developing technical training. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Allen, J. (1986).Designer’s guide to color 3. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

Electronic