jaiman.org

Tag

Children

22 Oct 2010  · comment

Junk food -- just what the doctor ordered?

For sometime now I have held this belief that we need to market healthy food to kids as if it were junk food. I sometimes ‘joke’ that if we were to stop our children from eating spinach and carrots along with chips they just might find the former two a little more attractive. I have actually noticed that kids who are not at all happy to eat vegetable will often happily eat a baked dish loaded with vegetables. Kids who will spit out the ‘pallak’ that comes with the ‘paneer’ will often relish a spinach and corn baked. Well, at least mine do (small sample size, I know). To test the theory I once toyed with the idea of starting a fast-food restaurant for kids that served only ‘junk food’. Well, that is what it would be ‘marketed’ as to the kids, but actually the food would be healthy and balanced. I even thought up part of the menu, branding, packaging… Unfortunately you cannot always cook everything you can think up, and the idea stayed untested…

Continue reading →

08 Aug 2005  · comment

Educating the rural children

Who will teach the teachers to see the hunger for learning in these bright sparks? “I am not sure, what is it that I want to do when I grow up… I don’t know… maybe I’ll get a job of some sort… or may be I will drive the camel cart, like my father… I am not sure at all, but I am not thinking about it…” As his voice died out, 10-year-old Ratan turned his spectacularly bright eyes to the ground. It hurt to hear the despair in his voice. I guess I’d be equally worried if he had said that he wanted to grow up and be an astronaut. But that would have been a worry mixed with hope rather than despair. Ratan lives in a small village called Sankhda, about 80 kilometers from the small touristy town of Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan. Here, people have lived for generations with very little water, surrounded as they are with sand dunes, and miles of barren land punctuated by occasional patches of fields irrigated by ground water.

Continue reading →