Embodied Video Games for Nutrition and Healthy Eating Learning: Evidence on Retention and Cognitive Processes in Primary Students

Digital games have been increasingly recognized as promising tools for supporting meaningful learning in school contexts. This study examined the effects of Alien Health, an embodied video game designed to promote nutrition and healthy eating learning among fifth-grade students in Chile. A quasi-experimental repeated-measures design was conducted with 327 students from 10 public, subsidized-private, and private schools in the Province of Concepción. Using pre-existing fifth-grade classes, participants were organized into a control group, who received traditional teacher-led instruction and an experimental group, who engaged with the video game without teacher mediation. Learning outcomes were assessed using the Nutrition and Healthy Eating (NHE) test, a 10-item curriculum-aligned instrument developed for this study and reviewed by expert teachers. The test was administered at pretest, posttest, and delayed retest. Data were analyzed through repeated-measures ANOVA, considering total scores, curricular sub-objectives, and Bloom-based cognitive categories. Results showed a differentiated pattern over time. Control students tended to achieve higher scores at the immediate posttest, particularly in tasks associated with factual recall, whereas experimental students showed more stable performance at delayed retest and stronger outcomes in some higher-order tasks, especially food classification and integrative diet design. Differences in school type and gender were also observed, suggesting that the effects of the intervention varied across educational contexts. Overall, the findings indicate that embodied video games may serve as a valuable complement to traditional instruction by supporting longer-term knowledge retention and conceptual integration in primary education. The study contributes empirical evidence from a Latin American context to the literature on embodied learning, game-based education, and nutrition teaching.