Fat Indian mommies are raising fatty kids. That is the conclusion of a 4-city survey conducted by the National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation which found that 64.8 per cent of mothers surveyed in Delhi, Agra, Pune and Bangalore were overweight or obese, as were 19.2 per cent of their sons and 18.1 per cent of their daughters.
The authors of the study blame the high-calorie effect of maternal love on a number of factors. One is the traditional Indian mindset. “Despite the obesity of their children they are fussing over them and if the child is overweight they consider them healthy rather than fat,” Dr Anoop Misra told the The Telegraph (UK). He claims this misguided attitude has been shaped by and transmitted by grandmothers “who had known famine.”
Another factor, authors argue, is the modern Indian woman who regards home cooked food as “old-fashioned” and feeds her child “commercial pre-packaged, ready-to-eat meals, rather than taking the time to prepare food from scratch as previous generations had.” This is hence a problem in middle and upper class families that earn above Rs 50,000 a month, reports the International Business Times:
“In the U.S., wealthier families are more knowledgeable about nutrition and hence have lower levels of obesity,” said Seema Gulati, an official at the foundation, the principal author of the study. “[But in India] children from well-to-do families were overweight or obese and so were their mothers,” suggesting poor nutritional knowledge among even well-educated, upper-income young mothers.
There’s not a word here about men who are not expected to take on the burden of feeding their children, nor the blame for what they are fed. Yet Indian men are somewhat more likely to be overweight than women (1 in 5 as opposed to 1 in 6). The truth is that Indian families are growing fatter as a whole — not just mothers or children. And when it comes to our children, Indian parents irrespective of gender are likely to indulge their every whim, be it for chocolates or McDonald’s burgers.
Long-forgotten famines aside, food is an expression of love in our culture. For generations, mothers would cook their husband’s and children’s favourite dishes, pile it high on their plates, urging them to ‘eat more.’ We would do the same with our guests, who would reciprocate in kind when we visited their home. And yet we didn’t have an obesity problem until now.
The problem is not in how much but what we feed each other. Rising incomes have shifted dietary tastes and habits of both men and women. We still ply those we love with oodles of food but of the wrong kind. The ‘new’ Indian prefers his momos, burgers, pizzas and kebabs to simple home-cooked khana. These are no longer rare treats but staple fare at the family table. We prefer to eat out or order in, and restaurants in turn have upped the butter quotient and serving size to match our desires.
We’re all culpable in this gluttony, and yet we prefer to wag our finger at bad, bad mommy.
The study’s authors are not the first to link modern motherhood to child obesity. Author Michael Pollan famously blamed feminism for the decline of home cooking in the New York Times:
It’s generally assumed that the entrance of women into the work force is responsible for the collapse of home cooking, but that turns out to be only part of the story. Yes, women with jobs outside the home spend less time cooking — but so do women without jobs. The amount of time spent on food preparation in America has fallen at the same precipitous rate among women who don’t work outside the home as it has among women who do: in both cases, a decline of about 40 percent since 1965. (Though for married women who don’t have jobs, the amount of time spent cooking remains greater: 58 minutes a day, as compared with 36 for married women who do have jobs.) In general, spending on restaurants or takeout food rises with income. Women with jobs have more money to pay corporations to do their cooking, yet all American women now allow corporations to cook for them when they can.
And in doing so, women have contributed to the rise of obesity in America, argues Pollan, citing a 1992 study which found that poor women who cooked were more likely to eat a more healthy diet than well-to-do women who did not.
Now, the link between processed or commercial food and weight gain is indisputable. The more often we eat out of a packet or eat out, the more likely we are to be fat. Working women around the world do indeed cook less, but why should we blame them when their husbands are not willing to do their share at home? The only men who cook in Pollan’s essay are male celebrity chefs. For all his angst over what American women have “allowed,” he never once castigates the American men for not stepping into the kitchen.
Besides, the link between home cooking and obesity is a lot weaker in India where body weight rises with family incomes. The study’s authors never ask why obesity continues to be a problem even in families that can afford a cook. It isn’t quite as easy to blame working women for bad diets when so many upwardly mobile couples can — if they choose — hire a part-time cook to make those healthy chapatis and dal. Even when urban couples employ help, they eat the same high calorie fare, whether it is cooked at home or at a restaurant.
The real moral of this big fat story is that free market affluence has turned us all into pigs in a sty. We want it deep-fried, drowning in butter or loaded with sugar. We eat more food of the wrong kind — and in turn shovel it down our children’s throats. We then spend the rest of our money on gyms and diet gurus to lose the fat. We’re all Americans now — but let’s not be blaming our mothers for that.
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