22 Oct 2010
· comment
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…
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19 May 2010
· photo-features
Some years ago I had an opportunity to work with underprivileged kids across of India. One project that I really enjoyed was working with them to create a photo-documentary of their world.
Most of these kids had never seen a camera before, let alone handle one. However, they were off to a flying start within minutes of being handed over a digital camera.
You can see the photo-documentary produced by kids in rural Karnataka, however the kids in remote Ladakh or Arunachal Pradesh had equally fascinating stories to tell.
Continue reading →18 Mar 2009
· comment
Here is some news for the academic minded parents and schools: “…brain activity and brain development are enhanced by physical exercise. It now appears that exercise can help kids learn at school.” Listen to the NPR story…
According to study presented to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) “students benefit both physically and academically from time devoted during the school day to physical activity”. Read this story…
Need more evidence? See this video by Stuart Brown at TED. His research shows that “play is not just joyful and energizing – it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence”.
Continue reading →05 Mar 2009
· comment
A study in the US has found that “TV ratings don’t accurately reflect the aggressive content found in shows popular among children – even cartoons”.
And what do you say to parents who take their 10-year-olds, 3-year-olds and even 9-month-olds to adult cinema? Not so long ago I left a late-night movie half-way because I found it disturbing/horrific… perhaps a little scary. But mothers with babies stuck to their bosoms stayed on…
Continue reading →26 Feb 2009
· media
Will the new Kindle read bed-time stories to our kids? Can it? Will it? Should it?
TV has proven its worth as a baby-sitter, across cultures! Social networking has effectively come to represent what we do using a browser and not what we do in our living rooms or parks and sports fields… This is a logical next step. Right?
The only loud objection one can hear is coming from the Author’s Guild of America. They don’t have a problem with the product… actually they suspect it may be very good. What they want is that the authors be sufficiently compensated for the audio rights being bundled into the Kindle 2.
Continue reading →12 Feb 2009
· media
Has it really? Is content being devalued because of the current economic conditions or is there a larger trend here? Have the accountant got it all wrong?
Read the Time article “Content, Once King, Becomes A Pauper”
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