Health apps for children: Cast your vote in the USDA competition

Apps, you may have heard, are hot hot hot, and health ones are proliferating like bunnies.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture sees this trend as a good way to lure in children to the habit of healthy living, and with that in mind they sponsored an apps-for-kids competition. ( It’s part of First Lady Michele Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign. ) Since March, when the contest began, the agency has received 95 entries.

The Apps for Healthy Kids contest has reached the judging stage, and the public is invited to vote for the two Popular Choice Awards.

Maybe you’ll be jazzed by “Thumbs Up Johnnie TM and the Super Centeam,” which will teach you about “Fat, Sugars, and Calories in the foods you love!” Or perhaps you’ll find yourself unable to stop playing “Food Buster, the game show that asks you to carefully stack food items that don’t break our scale.”

“Ration Roulette,” “Refridgeraider,” “Muncher Cruncher,” “Nutritionville, USA” -- ah, what a cornucopia of choices.

“We are excited to showcase the talent of our nation’s innovators while encouraging nutritious food choices and physical activity,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.

Now, don’t go to sleep on us, people. Go to the AppsForHealthyKids website and cast your vote. You have until Aug. 14.

Oh, and for more about health apps -- where to get them, how to judge them, and what physicians think of them -- check out a recent L.A. Times Health section article on apps by freelance writer Francesca Lunzer Kritz.

-- Rosie Mestel

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