Rickets on the rise due to gaming.

[Paulos G]

Awesome! The nation will shortly be overrun with violent vitamin D deficient children.

Times online story.

[Supergoal]

I've got a couple of rickets!

[Spatial]

About time. This country might now stand a chance of winning The Ashes on a regular basis.

[ezee ryder]

This was actually front page news in today's London Metro. Must have been pretty quiet on the news front I reckon.

Metro Dude 1: "Ah dammit, we have no top notch front page news!"
Metro Dude 2: "Let's just revert to plan B."
Metro Dude 1: "What's that then?"
Metro Dude 2: "We just find something to blame on gaming again and put it on the front page."

[Guts]

Some talented Photoshoper should make a poster that says:

"Video games, the source of all life's problems"

Include a picture collage with WTC blowing up, Adolf Hitler, AIDS etc.

[dotoko]

No idea what rickets is but my hand is now a mis-shapen claw after a week or so with Beatles: Rock Band. I can totally believe that some people suffer from gaming not done in moderation.

[importaku]

Rickets is where your bones deform & you get bowlegged. It's caused by a lack of vitamin D.

Yet again games are blamed, strange because the disease existed long before videogames were even thought of, what did they blame the cause of rickets on back then? Doing anything too much is not good for you. Yet these wankers take the easiest way out & blame something yet again on the evils of videogames.

Ironically sunlight is a nautral source of vitamin D however how much of that do we get in the UK LOL yeah no wonder rickets is on the increase it's the fact we never see any bloody sun.

You could easily blame it on the on books, look at timmy he spends all day indoors reading thats just so unhealthy, but they don't as nobody would pay attention they use games as it's a way of getting noticed. Those evil things must be banned, [daily mail] OMG think of the children [/daily mail]

[fallenangle]

Ludicrous story; vitamin D as said is primarily formed in the skin by sunlight. If there is a rise in rickets I'd blame it much more on the melanoma fear that has been hyped in this country for the last decade.

Parents have now been made scared of exposing their little darlings to sunlight, covering them up and slapping on factor 30+ at the slightest hint of sunshine. Even when they're not being ferried around in 4x4s and are actually allowed out into the open air they don't get enough exposure during the crucial years their bones are forming.

You can add to this faddy dietary avoidance of dairy products like cream, butter, cheese, egg, fish, nuts and a learned dislike of green vegetables (spinnach, kale etc) all of which either contain vitamin D and/or calcium.

But I blame Margret Thatcher - she stopped free school milk in the 1960s. Milk and specifically that supplied to schools for this purpose was enriched with vitamin D. Why? Answer: to prevent rickets then still a significant concern.

'Thatcherism causes rickets' would make a much better and more accurate headline.

[abigsmurf]

Even without sunlight, it's not hard to get enough Vitamin D if you have anything approaching a healthy diet.

It's like you still get the occasional case of scurvy. When you've a diverse population of 60million, you always get a handful of people eating abnormally low amounts of a common nutrient.