It’s Christmastime, and with it comes renewed requests from kids, siblings, and spouses for the latest and greatest electronic toy.  And this year, as in past years, the Nintendo Wii tops the charts.

The Nintendo Wii has come up on at least two other occasions in past Mangano postings, once with respect to how prevalent video gaming has become among adults, the other time addressing whether or not the Wii was a suitable replacement for actual exercise.

I stand by my original assessment:  the Nintendo Wii does not replace actual exercise done in the great outdoors or inside a health club.  But, in the spirit of full disclosure, there’s an alternative take.

In mid-November, researchers from the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Tokyo presented findings to the American Heart Association that the Nintendo Wii can and does replicate the effects of moderate exercise.

They came to their rather surprising findings through a tool that assesses energy expenditure called a Metabolic Equivalency Test, or MET.  The higher the score, the more rigorous the “exercise” is believed to be.

And surprisingly enough, coming in at a score of 5.6, the single-arm stand activity that users of the Wii can do for exercise is translated as being “vigorous activity,” according to the MET.

Other exercise-related actions, like swinging a racket in tennis games or a faux nine-iron in golf games, registered as being “moderate exercise,” with scores of 3.0 and 2.0, respectively.

The findings were presented by the study’s author, Motohiko Miyachi, to the American Heart Association on Nov. 16 in Orlando, Fla.

Now, I don’t want to question the veracity of the researchers’ findings, but a few things need to be made addressed.

For starters, the research was funded by a party with a clear self-interest—Nintendo.  So Miyachi’s methodology is at the very least skeptical, as it’s clear that Nintendo wouldn’t be happy if his findings suggested the exercise benefits were negligible.

Secondly, as Miyachi himself said, the study’s findings do not prove health benefits, and some exercise is always better than none.  To me, especially this latter statement, he’s acquiescing to what I said originally about the Wii:  It may be a form of exercise, but it’s not the same as traditional exercise.

Everyone ought to be able to have a good time, and a healthy lifestyle can include moderate amounts of time playing the Nintendo Wii or any other form of video-gaming entertainment for that matter.  And while the Nintendo Wii provides kids and adults with the opportunity to move more than sitting thumbing a joystick does, it should not be used to justify playing these games for more than an hour at a time.

What do you think?  Let your opinion be known in the forum.

Sources
msnbc.msn.com