Let us talk breakfast tradition. For me breakfast was something mom cooked everyday - things such as whole wheat breads with locally-grown fresh vegetables, cracked wheat or chivda cooked pilaf style.
When I visit India now, kids often seem more interested in, and their moms happy to feed them, highly processed and sugar-loaded industrial breakfasts such as Kellog's Chocos, Ramen-noodle type things or pancakes made from store-bought mixes which are nothing more than white flour. Relatives ask me to bring some fancier 'pancake mixes' from the US so that they can feed their kids healthier things. This new breakfast tradition has been fueled by ads comprising of smiling moms and kids, placed in urban middle class settings, proclaiming the benefits of vitamins and minerals in these new breakfast products. Ads also teach kids how to be 'healthy', thus associating their product with health in little minds and shaping a generation of junk-food eaters.
It is worth noting that it is not the convenience factor of cereal that is the attraction here. Busy middle class moms, the kind pictured in the ads, have servants.
I don’t know if anybody has even noticed this slow erosion of healthy traditions. but, hey, if few women ever enter a pub, watch for the culture police to descend in full force!
Raising kids in a non-native environment while constantly worrying about striking the right balance.
4 comments:
I see that erosion in the U.S., too -- though I think it happened a generation ago. (I was raised eating rice krispies for breakfast.) I think where it comes from is that advertising sells products by making people feel un-confident about themselves and their abilities. So people feel better about buying a mix or a prepackaged food that was made by a company that would *surely* know better how to do it "right" than they themselves would. I see that type of thinking a lot. It makes me sad. I wish I could give more confidence to the people who think that way, more trust in themselves.
Also, I think it's dangerous to trust companies to take good care of you. They're out to make money, and if the food they produce is healthy, it is mostly by accident. The healthiest food is the least processed, and so it has no ad budget.
Sigh....
Yes, and the funny thing is that cooking, say, pancakes form scratch takes about as long as using a mix. The advantage of doing it yourself is that you can add healthy ingredients. Last time a relative asked me to send them pancake mix I printed out a few recipes, with ideas on making them helathier and sent those instead :)
Have you read "Dinner Diaries - Raising whole wheat kids in a white bread world" by Betsy Block? It's hilarious but very educative too on how to have your children eat healthy.
Gayathri, I haven't read the book you mention but it sounds interesting. I will put it on my reading list.
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