Video games, in general, don’t do much for your waistline. While there was a brief surge of interest in exercise-themed titles in 2009–2010, the fad fizzled — and players happily returned to their couches, controllers in hand.

The rise of virtual reality could alter that slightly, as many of today’s games keep you moving and sometimes work up a good sweat. But Atkins Nutritionals, a company founded by Dr. Robert Atkins that promotes low-carbohydrate foods, is looking at the health benefits of VR through a different set of lenses. The company, at CES earlier this month, debuted a virtual reality game it hopes will help children (and adults) learn to make smarter choices when choosing what to eat.

“This is the first generation that’s going to have a shorter lifespan than their parents because of obesity,” says Colette Heimowitz, vice president of nutrition and education at Atkins Nutritionals. “If we can get them young and educate them about better choices, that might help.”

The game’s called “Sugar Goggles” — and let’s be very clear up front: It’s not going to win any best of 2017 awards for its game play. Players don a VR headset (demos were given on HTC’s Vive) and navigate their way through gold rings inside of what appears to be a human vein. (A disembodied set of hands moving with the VR system’s controllers helps them target the rings.)

After each ring, you encounter two plates with different foods. For instance, a banana and a whole-wheat bagel. Fly through the one that has the lowest impact on your blood sugar and you’ll get an in-game energy burst. Choose poorly and you’re told you’ve had a blood sugar spike and will be temporarily thrown off course.

It’s a short game, it doesn’t fully take advantage of what VR is capable of, and it’s graphically clunky, but it does have its heart in the right place and it’s the first virtual reality attempt to help educate people about the impacts of certain foods and, ideally, help them retrain their eating habits. A pair of 2016 reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed 38 percent of U.S. adults are obese, while 17 percent of teenagers fit that classification.

You can read the other half of this article on CNBC here: http://cnb.cx/2k27y7V