Credit: USDA/U.S. Army/MTV

Game designers were called to the White House's Truman Room last week to brainstorm. What the White House wants to know is what experts in the field of gaming interaction know that can be used to combat one of the United States' toughest foes: childhood obesity.

The target of the White House gaming project is young Americans in those critical "tween" years of 9 to 12, when many of us develop our eating habits for life. (Here's the attendee list for last week's White House session on gaming, led by U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra.)

Games and government aren't perfect strangers. The USDA, for example, has even experimented with nutrition-based games before; witness "MyPyramid Blast Off," aimed at a slightly younger set. But there's a growing interest both inside and outside government about how richly immersive and expertly crafted gaming experiences can help shape their players' ways of thinking about the world, whether that's the U.S. military's "America's Army" virtual war environment to MTV's choose-your-own-adventure-style "Darfur is Dying" online game to the massively collaborative "World Without Oil" experience.

Chopra is particularly interested in figuring how if small government-funded prizes might encourage game designers to build effective anti-obesity gaming experiences that young people will actually want to play. More here.