NutriQuest VR Game: An Immersive Serious Game for Promoting Healthy Dietary Behaviors Among Children

Childhood obesity has become a major public health concern worldwide, highlighting the need for innovative educational interventions that promote healthier dietary behaviors from an early age. Virtual reality (VR) serious games have emerged as a promising approach for supporting behavior change through immersive and interactive learning experiences. This paper presents the NutriQuest VR game, an immersive serious VR game designed to improve children’s nutritional decision-making through repeated food-selection tasks based on the Nutri-Score classification system. A total of 33 middle-school students participated in a six-week intervention consisting of six gameplay sessions. Children’s adherence to the Mediterranean diet was assessed before and after the intervention using the validated KIDMED 2.0 questionnaire, while participants’ in-game performance was recorded throughout the intervention. The results demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in children’s adherence to the Mediterranean diet, with mean KIDMED 2.0 scores increasing from 5.67 to 6.55 (p = 0.013, Cohen’s d = 0.459). Participants also showed a significant improvement in their in-game performance between the first and final gameplay sessions, with mean scores increasing from 300.15 to 327.27 (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.270). Overall, the findings provide preliminary evidence of improved reported Mediterranean diet adherence and in-game performance within the study sample.