Common Sense Media Review
By Jinny Gudmundsen
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Terrific software for home as well as school.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 9+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
What's It About?
HUNGRY RED PLANET is an innovative computer simulation produced by Health Media Lab under a grant from the National Institutes for Health. The game sends children on a space mission to colonize Mars. Their goal is to colonize Mars by establishing healthy, food-producing settlements. To keep the settlers healthy, and thus able to work at their potential, the players must provide healthy menus for the settlements.
To succeed, kids will learn how to interpret FDA Nutrition Facts labels found on the 300 real foods available for menu planning, and to conform their menus to the Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid and Healthy Eating Index. Players must also plan food production and allocate resources to expand their settlements. Kids will wrestle with food shortages, viruses, and unusual occurrences. If they keep the settlers healthy and produce enough food, they win.
Is It Any Good?
If you have children who think soda is a healthy breakfast, give them this game and you may find them reaching for the orange juice instead. This clearly educational simulation impressed our kid-testers because it was so much fun. They confessed to learning a tremendous amount about nutrition. Featuring excellent tutorials and a Nutrition Reference, Hungry Red Planet is terrific software for the home as well as for schools.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about their own diets. Do you eat healthfully? How could you improve your diet? What role does the media play in teaching both good habits and influencing the things that we want to eat?
Game Details
- Platform : Windows
- Pricing structure :
- Available online? : Not available online
- Publisher : Health Media Lab
- Release date : July 21, 2003
- Genre : Educational
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : August 25, 2016
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