Come summer vacations, and we have a barrage of ads targeting kids, selling ‘quick health’ with great packaging. Typically, it’s instant noodles for ‘bone health’, some sugar-loaded, chocolate-coated cereal for ‘brain power’ or a diluted fruit concentrate passing off as freshly squeezed juice. These ads invariably glorify the fuss kids make over food, often portraying a yummy mummy who is at her wits’ end to make her child eat. And then the junk, cleverly packaged as ‘healthy’, makes an appearance and that’s it, problem solved! The kid is eating and mommy is free to go back to her chores.
The ‘don’t know what to do to make my child eat’ phenomenon is so rampant that almost all the ads cash in on it. And why not? It projects real life and the constant struggle that mommies go through. Fathers never make an appearance in these ads: just like in real life, they are immune to kids’ food issues in ads too. It’s a mother’s problem.
When moms are single-handedly responsible for household chores and looking after little Pintu-Pinti, they just run out of energy and sanity. That’s exactly why these loving, sharp, intelligent women even buy into the philosophy that ‘healthy’ food can be opened out of a packet.
The hard truth is that kids get healthy as a consequence of eating right, and they eat right only when the entire family, including the fathers, adopt it as a value system. What also works is fathers taking an active part in not just child-rearing but also in household chores, so that we don’t turn into gullible consumers who will pay extra for well-packaged junk that promises to save time and add health to our kids’ lives.
(The author’s latest book is called Women and the Weight Loss Tamasha)
