Kerala - Kochi   

Chubby cheeks hide a sorry tale state trends

Photo: S. Mahinsha

Unhealthy bite: Children are keen on packaged food items which are high in calories, salt and taste additives. —

KOCHI: Everybody loves the round fat baby. Product advertisers love them all the more, for they give out to the world a message of wellbeing. He or she is all over the place, promoting diapers, health drinks, biscuits and a mind-boggling variety of the addictive crunchy stuff, often with a plastic figurine of one of the on-air cartoon characters thrown in for free.

Very often, the children eat in the company of their preferred cartoon characters with the TV going full blast, little realising the taste of what they eat or that what they eat is leaving them vulnerable to all kinds of post-dated ailments.

What are our children eating? May be it is time this question started worrying parents in the State because children these days are consuming more calories for their age and weight compared to those of the last generation, says Manu Raj, a paediatrician heading the lifestyle clinic at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences here.

This difference is more evident in urban areas where children’s activity levels have gone down significantly, says Dr. Raj.

It is the changes in the family’s eating pattern that is basically getting reflected in the eating habits of children. A family that eats out twice a week or has fried items at home consumes more fat than carbohydrates and proteins.

When eating out, children often go for pizzas, burgers, parathas, fried fish or fried chicken, each of them loaded with fat dangerous for the children’s healthy growth, particularly in combination with carbonated drinks which have zero nutritive value, says Leena Pradeep, paediatrician at the Government General Hospital here.

As children age, fast food consumption increases. Current snacking behaviour of children is unhealthy because the food they select is rich in calories, fat and sodium and almost devoid of good fibre.

The snacks are usually heavy — more than 15-20 per cent than a regular meal. A new entrant into a typical child’s diet is the high tea that happens at home or bakery after school. Earlier, teatime for children was limited to a cup of tea and biscuits, home-made snacks or the leftover from breakfast. But, nowadays, a significant portion of calories is consumed during teatime, often much more than what they consume through breakfast or lunch.

Children are heavily influenced by peers when it comes to food preferences, not to speak of the TV commercials. Little children prefer processed foods, the tastes of which are very often manipulated to encourage brand loyalty. “It is difficult to convince children that carbonated drinks or the ready-to-eat snacks are not good for health because all others at school boast of what they had when they went for an outing,” says Sindhu Sreedhar, mother of a primary school child.

Of the regular meals, it is breakfast that has been hit the hardest by the changing eating habits and lifestyle. Dr. Raj says that ideally children should have a good breakfast, moderate lunch and light dinner getting 50 per cent of their day’s calorie requirement from breakfast, 30 per cent from lunch and 20 per cent from dinner.

However, this order is seldom followed in majority of homes. There is no harm in having a healthy snack or two between meals as long as they are less than 10 per cent of their daily calorie requirements, he says.

Dinner is usually the only time the family eats together and probably the only meal which is eaten by both children and parents with plenty of time. Hence, food at this time is heavy and rich in calorie.

A significant portion of non-vegetarian consumption also happens at this time. A heavy meal before sleep is not a good idea.

It also has long-term health consequences. A growth promoting drink before they go to bed makes things much worse. Bakery items should be less than 1 per cent of the daily calorie requirements.

In the diet of many children who consume bakery food on a regular basis, this goes up to 10 to 20 per cent. Children also frequent wayside snack outlets which use cheap cooking oil rich in saturated fat. The oil is reheated umpteen times making it extremely unhealthy.

For housewife Neena John, it is a tough task to lecture her class-IX son not to frequent the eateries and bakeries with friends. “I am a nag at that time and he simply will not listen to anything that will make him different from what his friends are doing,” says a harried Ms. John.

Although everybody agrees that good eating habits must begin early, the composition of the food for infants is rarely given due importance. It may often be rich in calorie with high content of carbohydrate and fat and low in proteins.

Ideally, carbohydrate should be around 55 per cent, fat less than 30 per cent and protein about 15 per cent of the total calories for children older than two years. In case of non-vegetarian children, protein diet is mainly of animal origin. Ideally, it is better to have one-third of protein coming from vegetable sources.

According to Dr. Raj, growth-promoting drinks are not needed for the majority of infants as they have normal growth. Yet mothers or caretakers supplement them with the same. This results in accelerated growth patterns in babies which, in turn, invite lifestyle diseases later on in life. This danger is more for children who are born with low birth weight.

Caretakers believe that low birth weight can be corrected by giving an extra dose of food. Such false perceptions about the nutrition of children coupled with marketing strategies of commercial forces are contributing to the ever increasing popularity of these unwanted diet supplements, says Dr. Raj.

Now, ponder again before you fawn upon your little ‘chubby cheeks…’

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