Actual sport still the real deal for youngsters

Popular fitness games designed for home video game consoles like Nintendo's Wii cannot turn couch potatoes into athletes, a study by Muenster University's Institute for Sports Medicine has concluded.

In the study, more than 40 students in the German university's department of sports studies tried out four sports in one such game - each for 15 minutes at a time with 20-minute breaks in between.

Afterwards, those tested rated their subjective sense of physical exertion, and their heart rates and lactate levels were measured. This data was then compared with research-based averages from people performing the actual sports.