The Development of Virtual Worlds as a Tool for Providing Virtual Grocery Store Tours

Poor dietary choices are a leading cause of preventable chronic disease. Consequently, improving dietary choices is a key public health goal. While several approaches are available to influence dietary choices, consumer education is likely a key to improving the diet. One approach to educating consumers is to provide grocery store tours where consumers are provided with nutrition education where purchasing decisions are often made. At this time, there has been limited research to show the effectiveness of this approach or to develop best practices. A possible barrier to innovation in this area concerns the difficulty to get access to grocery stores to conduct tours. Moreover, these barriers may also hamper research efforts to identify best practices. A possible alternative approach is to create virtual worlds where grocery store tours can be conducted remotely. This present manuscript describes an approach to developing virtual grocery stores as a method for providing nutrition education with a description of the design possibilities.