Deerfield High School junior Annika Huprikar has a novel idea for how to reduce childhood obesity.
She came up with a board game.
FRUGGIE, which is not yet in wide distribution, encourages players to pass on opportunities to eat candy as a way to improve their chances of winning.
Participants roll dice to advance from one square to another, according to Huprikar. If they land on an apple, they get to eat a slice. Should they land on candy, they can consume a piece but must move back two spaces.
“Some parents told me their children didn’t want to eat the candy because they didn’t want to move back,” Huprikar said. “Winning was more important than eating the candy.”
Huprikar conducted an initial six-month research project that tested the behavior of 10 local children as they played the game she began to develop two years ago. The results were published June 13 in the Journal of Emerging Investigators.
Concerned about the ill effects of childhood obesity, Huprikar developed FRUGGIE to teach children healthy eating habits at a young age. She said obesity can lead to life threatening diseases later in life. Her research subjects were between 3 and 7 years old.
“I grew up playing board games and it was always fun,” Huprikar said. “If they learn how to eat healthy it will be one way to stop obesity.”
She put a small penalty in the game for eating candy. The idea was to not make it a banished food, but to teach children it should be consumed in moderation while fruits and vegetables should be eaten much more frequently.
“That’s where FRUGGIE comes from,” Huprikar said. “It is a combination of fruits and vegetables.”
Heading into high school two years ago, Huprikar read an article in the Chicago Tribune where researcher Linyuan Jing talked about childhood obesity. Jing’s email address was in the story and Huprikar reached out. She said she received valuable mentorship.
When she arrived at Deerfield High School, Huprikar went to see Judi Luepke, the science department chair, to find out where she could find children to play her game so she could do scientific research on the results of their competition.
“She asked for my help getting children for her experiment,” Luepke said. “I talked to my colleagues and said I had a student who needed some children for her experiment. They decided to do it with their children.”
Tracking the data for six months, Huprikar learned children playing the game were learning about healthy eating habits. She said she was most pleased with the fact they were being educated from a game she developed.
“They were learning this at a relatively early age,” Huprikar said.
Once Huprikar had her results, she wrote a detailed report and started looking to get it published. She said she had help from both Jing and Luepke reaching out to the Journal of Emerging Investigators.
Mark Springel, the president of the journal, said they was aware of Huprikar’s work as she was going through the process. When her report was done, he said they decided to publish it.
“We don’t make it easy on a student,” Springel said. “We put it through a peer review scenario. She showed a passion for her subject and research. She was incredibly accomplished.”
Now that she has developed the board game, Huprikar has also created a FRUGGIE smart phone app that she describes as “a little different” from the board game. It is more like a video game where a character builds a healthy food pyramid. She is currently looking for 40 research subjects between ages 6 and 9. She hopes to be able to write a report when school starts.
Huprikar wrote the code for the app herself. Luepke said she is impressed with Huprikar’s technical skills.
“She’s very tech savvy the way she developed the app,” Luepke said.
