Odds are you don’t know who Dr. Michael Duncan is, but right now you probably wish you were him. You see, Dr. Duncan from the University of Derby (that’s in England, kids) has been awarded £5,000 to study whether or not Wii Fit can help in the ongoing fight against obesity.

The study, which will be done over a span of some six weeks, will test to see how much exercise obese children are getting from playing the game through the use of an accelerometer. The accelerometer will then tell Dr. Duncan how much exercise kids are actually getting from the game.

Duncan explains his intentions with the study:

There is a lot of discussion that video games are bad for your health and we hope this research will determine if playing on this equipment could actually have physical benefits for children.

Studies like this are nothing new. When the Wii was first released there were a slew of studies to determine the health benefits of playing Wii Sports. To say the findings were mixed would be kind. Something tells me this won’t help much.

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