Feeding Time

An authoritative study by British researchers reports that children of working mothers are less healthy than those mothers who stay at home. The study also cites data that children of full-time working mothers were driven to school by moms or dads, watched over two hours of TV per day, drank sweetened drinks in between meals and also eat less fruit and vegetables. This data was the same across all income groups.

The research also says that mothers who worked part time had kids who eat more fruit and vegetables. When it came to the level of exercise that children took, there was no difference between working mothers and non-working mothers.

Fussy eaters seem to be the most common complaint of Mums in every part of the world. One kid I know in Mumbai does not have this problem. I have never seen this kid’s mother as she is always accompanied by her manservant, Bahadur whose singsong statement perennially is ‘Hamara baccha, sab khaatha!’ And the other Moms in the building give him dirty, desperate looks as uniformly all their kids between ages 1 and 8 are fussy, difficult eaters.

I cannot but look back at my childhood and my children’s eating habits. My mother used to say that I was not a great eater and until 5, I was mostly brought up on milk and maybe a little dhal and rice, the paruppu saadam that all Tamil kids are fed. My mother was a great cook and made many pan-Indian dishes and my brothers and I grew up on a variety of cooking not limited to Tambram dishes. My father was a strict disciplinarian and we just had to eat what was served on our plates especially if we had our meals in his company. The downstairs tenant could always predict this state of affairs if various veggies came flying out of the windows and landed plonk on his doorstep. ‘Aha! The upstairs children are eating with their father’ was his knowledgeable nod.

My children grew up with a lot of interaction with neighbours and friends. Most often the meals were shared by all the kids, especially in the weekends and holidays. They eat many international cuisines—a gamut of Indian regional fare, local Creole food, Mauritian dishes, Chinese mein and French gratins and consommés. Later they polished up their plates in various parts of the world eating anything and everything. At home they had their favourite veggies and generally shunned local varieties like cluster and broad beans, padol and tooris. Now as an adult my son has to eat many of these veggies as he has to set a good example to his kids. Given a chance he would miss out on these varieties even today.

Today’s kids seem to have no problems eating noodles and pasta. South Indian kids have taken to roti in a big way and anything fried goes down like a dream. When it comes to the ordinary dhal chawal fare they develop blocks in their throat (needle gullets as my Mom used to say) and food tends to accumulate in their cheek and jaw cavities.

The blame for kids poor eating is automatically thrust on the shoulders of working Moms. Sometimes I think it is a conspiracy of men to lay on the guilt trip on women. Kids welfare is such a convenient a button to be pressed where women are concerned! Many men are taking on the responsibility of overseeing and catering to their kids mealtimes. Yet the majority do think it is the woman’s job to see that kids are fed wholesome and healthy food.

Meanwhile Mom’s run around desperately trying to see that their kids eat properly and most often it is a loosing battle. Even paediatricians, many of them male, say that meal times must be made interesting. Any sidetracking activity during feeding, like watching Barney or Dora or storytelling by grandparents is strictly frowned upon. Kids are smart—they know which buttons to press on the DVD, the computer or on their parents psyche!

ARIGATO—Thank you

Today I had the unique experience of interacting with a group of Japanese women visiting Chennai.

There were four of them:

• Akemi Yoshii, works with a Chennai software company as a Japanese translator and is also a freelance food writer who has completed her Master’s in Gastronomy at the University of Adelaide, Australia) and writes about Indian cuisine for Japanese media.
• Kurumi Arimoto, cook book author is the daughter of the most famous cookery author in Japan,Yoko Arimoto.
• Maiko Shimizu, is a professional writer, editor and photographer and Radio presenter. She is running a web site “One doodle Land (http://onedoodle.jugem.jp/)” and planning to introduce Kurumi’s travel of Chennai through her web site.
• Akemi Kimura who owns a boutique in Yamaguchi, Japan.
  They wanted to learn how to make South Indian dishes and my friend Viji Varadarajan, who has authored many cookbooks, arranged a session in her house. We were contacted through the internet and it was a very satisfying experience teaching them important dishes from the Chennai cuisine..
  
  The main item on the menu was Kozhakattai/modak that is made for Lord Ganesha. They were surprised that it was just like their wontons and they showed a remarkable dexterity in making the sweetmeat. It is not an easy dish to prepare for seasoned cooks but it was amazing that they could manipulate and shape the dough, (made of rice flour and water and cooked into a paste) with élan.
  
  I took Akemi Kimura to a French company, Vastralaya, that is custom making hand embroidered furnishings in Chennai for designers from Paris and Europe. She was completely taken aback at the quality of the embroidery and its intricacies. The workers are all men in this establishment and they truly do fantastic Ari, Zardozi and appliqué work apart from crewel and other Indian embroideries. It seems that the traditional expertise in hand embroidery in Europe is now practically extinct. The East is still maintaining its hold over traditional crafts but that too may disappear as the children of all these craftsmen are training and moving over to white collar jobs.
  
  A couple of months ago I had the chance of meeting a Saurashtrian family of silk weavers, Veerayya Silks, that can trace its roots in the same house that still stands to seven generations. They are making silk saris and have found out that direct marketing to a select clientele is more remunerative. They come to the client’s house with their saris. They have had no training in Avon/Oriflame marketing strategies; they don’t advertise but are able to successfully run their business by sheer word of mouth.
  
  The enterprising initiatives by entrepreneurs from different parts of the world is very interesting for a people watcher like me.