Food, undoubtedly, remains a major pleasure for many people. Besides easing hunger, food also serves as a signature of our identity. What we cook and eat reflects our culture, geographic area, our heritage and, of course, the religion and the community we represent. Good food is our passport to good health. Eating out has become a way of living for many of us due to globalisation and change in the working ethos, and also for women who have broken the shackles of the kitchen and are office executives. Ready-to-eat foods and ready-to-serve snacks find their place in almost every home, big or small and rich or poor. Even festivals and traditional ceremonies are not an exemption nowadays. I still remember my mother preparing the favourite sweets and savouries for us and our neighbours treating us a day prior to Deepavali, New Year or Krishna Jayanti. Every festival was a treat to the food lovers. But today we have readymade packs for Krishna Jayanti or Deepavali. Who knows, very shortly we may have readymade customised packages for Pongal and Mattu Pongal!!
Aspiring to become supermoms and to produce super kids, we have forgotten the golden days of our childhood and now we shamelessly deny our beloved young ones the joy of cooking, sharing and enjoying eating.
I am sure that every one of us will agree with me that if we rewind our memory to our schooldays, vow, what fun we had savouring a variety of small eats during the interval and lunchbreak. The vendors outside the school did brisk business selling mouth-watering eatables — mangoes, crispy groundnuts, sizzling gooseberries, soft and tasty sweet potatoes and, of course, the rice flakes ball and spicy sundal.
What a balanced meal even for a break! Groundnuts and sundal were a good source of protein, sweet potato gave us carbohydrate, gooseberries and garden fresh guava supplied Vitamin C and parched rice balls with jaggery were a rich natural source of iron.
Girls' geometry box contained pieces of gooseberry, tamarind, etc, besides pens and pencils. Relatives would visit us with home-made murukku and adirasam . Every evening, while returning home our minds would be musing on the hot delicious snacks awaiting us. What a variety of mouth-watering taste and goodness — are we giving this pleasure to our children now?
We take more pride than pleasure nowadays in giving our kids calorie-dense confectioneries and ready-to-eat snacks loaded with unwanted preservatives and chemicals. The quality and quantum of nutrients in these eatables are a matter of debate. These serve as the mother and cradle for the onset of childhood obesity, anaemia, dental caries, eating disorders, malnutrition and repeated infection in the G.I. tracts.
I know I would sound amusing if I ask every school to have vendors outside their premises, or dictate terms and conditions to my friends and relatives to come up with home-made preparations for their kids. Even if all these things happen, our children are not going to relish it for the simple reason we have not trained their taste buds for these delicacies right from childhood.
A small fantasy of the future foods for our children:
Introduce a wide spectrum of simple, healthy, fresh food.
A choice of the seasonal food (vegetables and fruits) in our day-to-day cooking will be ideal as it is not only healthy but also cheap.
A strong NO to commercial and ready-to-eat foods as they pose the risk of many non-communicable diseases.
Practise healthy food habits in front of your children. Do not restrict their food habits, let them get exposed to different flavours and taste but guide and teach them on healthy food and healthy eating.
Talk to them (no lectures please) on the benefits of fresh fruit, fruit juices, salads and homemade snacks, give them safe food and also all the goodness of minerals, vitamins and fibre that protect them from disease.
(The writer is Assistant Professor, Dept. Food Service Management & Dietetics, Avinashilingam Institute of Home Science
and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore. Her email is premala09@ hotmail.com)
