If your mother told you to never play with your food, she was wrong. Pixelate is a Guitar Hero style eating game where players compete in one-minute showdown to see who can eat the most food in the correct order. While it sounds like a stomach ache waiting to happen, Pixelate is in part designed to help people make better choices when it comes to food, whether it's helping children make healthier choices, teaching portion control, or educating both children and adults about nutrition. The display, built into the custom dining table, shows players which foods to eat and when. Using a custom-designed fork, players select various food items and software in the fork detects what the food is, based on measuring the food’s resistance.

Complete with vintage video game stylings and music, Pixelate is not just an entertaining game that asks people to think about what they are putting into their bodies, it's also a commentary on our relationship with the digital world. Designers Sures Kumar, and Lana Z Porter explain: “in the same way that food is fundamental to our existence as animals, pixels are the fundamental elements of the digital image,” the team explains. “Pixelate is a marriage of the two.” Essentially, we eat what is dictated to us by the digital.

Using a retro game look and mechanic is an interesting way to both educate and entertain people about a perhaps otherwise dull subject.