Lead Developer of the Food Diary: Jeff Thomas

In the last post, Steph gave you all a tour of the look and feel of Healthy Mario. In this post, I am going to give you a tour of the Food Diary and how it interacts with Healthy Mario.

The food diary directly explores the main focus of this project, healthy eating. This log is a visual representation of the users daily diet. The idea of the food diary came about when trying to think of a way to make this project educational yet fun. We wanted to make it so that those who ate healthy would be rewarded. The goal of this part of the project is to help kids understand what foods are good to eat and in what quantities.

The Design of the Food Diary is very simple. The Pyramid is based off of the USDA MyPyramid. This Pyramid emphasizes the importance of each type of food in a diet.

The previous food pyramid had different foods at different tiers; this pyramid has them all at the same level to symbolize the importance of having each type of food within a healthy diet. The USDA MyPyramid program has multiple pyramids including pyramids for children, adults, weight loss, pregnant women, and also personally customizable pyramids. The USDA MyPyramid program recognizes the important fact that each person is different and therefore each person should have a specific diet. The many different pyramids have helped us focus in on our specific age group (first grade) for the project.

The right side of the screen holds the count of each type of food the student has entered for the day. It displays the fraction of the recommended daily servings as well as the percentage of daily servings. These are green if they are under the recommended amount and red if they exceed the recommended amount. The fats section has neither a percentage nor a fraction of recommended daily servings. This is because there is no recommended amount of servings for the fats food group.

The information that is entered in the food diary by the student player is then used across the application. The amount of each type of food is saved every time the “make an entry” button is clicked as long as an entry has not been made that day. If an entry has been made, then the amounts in the text file are updated. These amounts will be used for the proportions of what types of foods show up in the game as well as a graph of the food eaten.

To make the game even more exciting we have decided to add rewards for completing levels and also for having a healthy diet. These rewards will be in the form of trophies within the game. The reward system will help encourage kids to eat healthy. Below is a screenshot of the new landing page. The trophies will be placed on the top level of this page, as indicated by the red circle.

This concludes my tour of the food diary. Thank you for supporting this project through reading our blog. It has and continues to be a great pleasure serving the community through one of my personal passions. Make sure to check back for more update on Healthy Mario!!!