Active Health With Carol Vorderman

Serial product endorser Carol Vorderman is back, and after crippling loans and number games she's now decided it's a good idea to put her name to the latest trend, Health and Fitness software for video games consoles.

Active Health is ostensibly similar to the other health titles: you tell Carol your vital statistics and she tells you you are overweight, because if you weren't why would you be buying such a title, right?!

Then Carol calculates your Body Mass Index (BMI) and tells you how to become slimmer and fitter. The answer is to eat less and exercise more, of course... and Carol will devise a fitness regime for you and give you a target calorie count to aim for. But like Nintendo's other recent DS fitness title, Walk With Me, Active Health enables users to utilise the Activity Meter - basically a pedometer - to keep track of what exercise they have done.

But Active Health goes beyond most other fitness titles, and takes a more holistic approach to your health. Not only does it advise you on an exercise regime, but it keeps track of what you have done in addition. Not only does it give you a calorie target, but it provides other useful nutritional advice, and even has a selection of recipes for you to try, some of them being Carol's own, we are told. Active Health also enables you to keep track of your salt, sugar and fat intake.

The title does rely pretty heavily on the BMI - which is not always a good guide of whether a person is overweight or not, especially for athletic people. Top rugby players often show as "obese" when BMI is used as the yardstick, but it's a reasonable enough measure for your average person.

The game is published by Nintendo, so you can be confident that despite Carol's attachment, it's not hastily rushed out tat to the exploit the success of Wii Fit. But there has been some confusion surrounding the game's relationship to Wii Fit. Nintendo initially said the two games would "sync", but later retracted that and stated, "Active Health allows you to input any exercise completed on Wii Fit into your personal activity log".

Active Health's broad range of topics, and its mixture of fun and motivation make it a valuable tool for anyone trying to lead a healthier lifestyle. It's sure to be a popular title because of this.