by Priya Gopal
[box]Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s recent statement about the quality of students entering the IITs created quite a stir. In this context, Priya Gopal raises a pertinent question – do school children eat healthy and nutritious food? The unfortunate answer is No. Read on. [/box]A recent statement by Infosys founder Mr. N.R Narayana Murthy on the quality of students entering IIT has stirred a hornets’ nest. He said that the quality of students entering Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has deteriorated over the years due to the coaching classes that prepare engineering aspirants.
Student-friendly education, teachers who are facilitators, schools that help develop creativity, radical exam reform: students seem to have it all going their way.
But then Mr. Murthy doesn’t seem to be benefitting from this and the IT industry bigwigs support him in this.
Why is it that we are no longer able to create the geniuses that we strive to with all the modern theories of education put into practice? Why is it that the rigorous, old and outdated means to education that were in place earlier seemed to create more hardworking and sincere individuals?
Mr. Murthy is rightly concerned about the deteriorating quality of students entering the IITs. While this requires academicians and policy makers to seriously contemplate and design courses and policies accordingly, they should simultaneously spare a thought to tune one discordant note in this cacophony: FOOD.
Children often value taste and variety over health and nutrition when it comes to food. Demand- supply patterns followed by organisations lead students into typical Catch 22 situations. Canteens are usually market driven while choosing the food they stock while the student bodies excuse themselves from healthy eating options.
Surveys show that the educated middle and upper classes in India are churning out an equal number of malnourished kids as the poverty stricken strata of the society. Cities like Mumbai start school as early as seven in the morning. Children leave home in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes as early as six, with only a glass of milk for breakfast. The first break in schools are as late as 10 AM.This means that the student learns on an empty stomach for as long as three hours. As a teacher, I have been witness to a number of growing kids who frequent the canteen and purchase samosas or vada pavs for breakfast. The most frequent excuse would be: Mom came home late last night or nobody was awake when I left home. They leave school at 1 PM and reach home by 3 in the afternoon. Lunch happens only by 4 PM often, comprising a Frankie purchased from the canteen. Latch key kids have now evolved to become canteen-fed kids. Not many schools are actually worried about what is sold in their canteens.
Interestingly many preschools do have a lunch time curriculum. Food timetables are given. Care is taken to ensure that kids avoid junk food and birthdays are planned to ensure that cakes are homemade and no junk food is distributed in class. But this stays as a USP of preschools.
15 to 18 years is the most vulnerable age group. Peer pressure is at its maximum. Competitive exams are of high priority. Moreover, young students don’t want to be seen with a lunch box from home. It’s cool to eat from the canteen .One is part of the ‘in crowd’ depending on how much money one can blow up in the canteen.
Yoga classifies food into Satvik, Rajasvic and Tamasik food. The Upanishads say ‘Yatha khadyatennam, tatha nigadyate manaha’, which means the type of food eaten decides the type of mind one develops. Any good food guide, eastern or western, talks about eating wholesome food, free of oil, fats and sugars. Satvik food enhances memory and helps develop a healthy mind and body. It is composed of fresh fruits and vegetables. Rajasvic food has spices and helps build energy while Tamasik food is heavy and causes lethargy. The yogis categorised oily food, potatoes and starch-heavy food to be Tamasik. Research has shown that what the yogis said ages ago holds water even today.
In the mad rush to cope with the board as well as innumerable entrance exams, project submissions, lectures et al., where does a student have the time or inclination to figure out what he is eating or should be eating? In a recent interview to the Times of India, the director of IIT, Guwahati, Gautam Barua says, “On entering the IITs after undergoing excessive coaching, the students are almost burnt-out and mentally fatigued.” Students preparing for the multitude of competitive exams shuttle from home to school to classes. They do not care about what, when and how they eat. Food, at this stage, is just anything that can keep the hunger pangs away. Most college-going students survive on a diet of fizzy drinks, pizzas, pasta, noodles, bread, tea and coffee. The brain does need glucose to work and think but a bottle of cola has enough sugar to nourish 15 brains at the same time. Food products that claim they are easy to prepare and still healthy to use are usually devoid of any nutrition. We are developing a generation of unhealthy kids: kids who eat food but do not benefit from it, physically or mentally.
Research in food and nutrition shows that in order to sustain a healthy mind in a healthy body one needs to eat nutritious food every two hours. It is scientifically proven that a healthy kid learns better than a hungry one. So Mr.Murthy, I think we need to look beyond coaching classes and the bureaucratic mess that this country is in. You have given us food for thought. Let us give thought to food.
Priya Gopal is the Section Head (CBSE) at the Curriculum Department of Kangaroo Kids Education Ltd., Mumbai. An educator by choice, teaching and interacting with kids is something that has enthused her over the last 16 years. Priya lives in Mumbai with her husband and two children. She blogs at http://keepsmilinginlife.
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I read an article recently, which carried a comment by a top-nutritionist who says that India will achieve in 10 years what the US took 50 years to achieve – children who fall in the obese category will drastically increase in India in the next decade. No thanks to the increasing number of parents who work long hours and hence eating out is more out of compulsion rather than choice. Scary.
dear Priya,
very well thought. as a nutritionist, i always wonder when will parents think about healthy future citizens. your article hopefully makes many think about an imp aspect of education.
thank you.
There is a typing error in the first paragraph – what with 1/3 of our chidren obese & a surprisingly ‘equalittiptop’ 1/3 malnourished – may please be read as ‘what with 1/3 of our chidren obese & a surprisingly ‘equal’ 1/3 malnourished.
‘ Empty calories’ are what our currently hot ‘ultrafast’ foods like pizzas, colas & noodles provide the average Indian consumer, at half the waiting time and double the expenditure. But who’s complaining ? None — afterall, its a ‘ win-win’ situation.
The health of the nation’s children can be compared to the proverbial 2 sides of the coin ( although here, the 2 sides of the coin are almost identical), what with 1/3 of our chidren obese & a surprisingly equalittiptop 1/3 malnourished.
Children are naturally fascinated by junk foods and fast foods.The outlets providing them are fast catching up not only in numbers, but also in innovativeness. The current fad in addition to the addictive ‘ajinomoto’ , is that they have come up with toys and playstations to attract the kids & their families.
Children who are born & brought up obese and overweight carry their flabs forward, well into their adolescence & adulthood, with the consequence that there is an alarming, unprecedented prevalence of previously purely adult lifestyle illnesses like Hypertension & Diabetes in adolescence and early youthhood. No wonder India holds the unenviable tag of being the ‘international capital’ of an unending list of chronic non-communicable diseases like Atherosclerosis, Dyslipidemia, Coronary artery (heart) disease, apart from the usual culprits , Hypertension & Diabetes, which have now assumed epidemic proportions. Does this ‘ultrafast’ food system give the proper nutrition & balanced diet that a child requires in the growing phase and age ? The answer , woefully is a resounding NO.
Lets cast our glance now to the other side of the horizon- that of poverty & the attendant malnutrition.Malnutrition not only contributes to roughly a half of all childhood deaths worldover, by way of diarrhoeal & respiratory illness deaths, those chidren who do survive by sheer luck are further sapped of their already dwindling nutritional reserves by repeated infections, the consequent hospitalization & treatment effects. Needless to say, they are incorporated into a vicious cycle of recurrent illness, faulty growth and dyslexia.
What are the consequences ? Apart from the obvious human rights violation, issues like impaired immunity, poor cognition, underproductivity as adults and suseptibility to aforementioned lifestyle illnesses come to the fore. An undernourished girlchild invariably grows to an undernourished female, who in turn gives birth to an infant who is undernourished to start with, in the womb itself. A classic case of ‘from the womb to the tomb’ — born undernourished, dead the same too.Thus these hapless chidren are drawn into a self-perpetuating web of intergenerational deprivation. It is here that the oft repeated theory that is heard in nutritional parlance assumes relevance – the’ thrifty gene hypothesis’.
A genetic predisposition to develop Diabetes was adaptive to the feasting & famine cycles of the palaeolithic human existence, allowing them to fatten rapidly and profoundly during times of feasting , in order thar they might survive better during famines and scarcity.This would have been advantageous otherwise, but in the current environment of ‘starvation in the midst of plenty’ , this preparation for a ‘famine that would never come’ has predisposed the individual and the society at large to widespread chronic illnesses later in life.
So what can be done to stem the rot ? Green leafy vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grains and dairy products must be the order of the day and must directly serve as ‘food exchanges’ for the immensely popular Cocacolas , Mcdonalds,pizzas, redmeats & noodles respectively. A healthy lifestyle must not be
prescribed just coinciding with childbirth. Just like ‘charity begins at home’ , it has to start with the parents themselves so that the ‘legacy effect’ of ill-health is not transferred unsolicited to their innocent children
& grandchidren.