http://www.angelfire.com/alt2/eatwell/
dammi@lesors.com
I am a Sri Lankan now residing in South West of France with my family but I was born and brought up in Sri Lanka. My husband is English and very happy to be often eating Asian cuisine. I often prepare traditional Sri Lankan , Indian, or Bengali meals. From time to time I make Thai, Malaysian, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Mexican and sometimes even English or French dishes. You might wonder how I learnt all these dishes. Well, since I was very young I have been travelling for work and over the years I have adapted to various ways of eating as I got to meet people from all over the world. That was how I met my husband and since marrying I have had chances to travel and carry on learning more and more. My grandmother was also a very good cook and going for holidays to her village home taught me that the way to eat well is through understanding how to prepare food properly. My philosophy is “the best way to life and health is to eat healthily; health gives the strength to be happy and happiness leads to everything nice”. We all know that there are healthy and unhealthy eating habits. We should know by now that the majority of companies which deal in ready made foods only target profit and nothing else. They are not concerned with the welfare of the people who make them rich. We are hypnotised by their advertising so it’s easy for them. They serve cheap, tasty, filling food and we want it again and again and finally feel, oh well, we had a good day out with the children. That’s how it works. But at the end of the day we do not benefit either financially or health wise. The only thing we gain is weight and a shorter life expectancy. So we are just victims. Why do we do this? I hear many mothers say ‘Oh well after all they are children. They should enjoy these things while they are young and as we can afford it we should do the best we can’. In fact what you think is doing the best for them may be doing the worst, especially for their health. Sad to say they may not be healthy enough even to carry on to become an adult. Even if they do reach adulthood, it may be that they suffer from poor health due to poor diet. Who’s fault is it? It’s surely the parents’ fault. We are responsible. They could have had a happy, healthy childhood and adulthood and we have deprived them of it. Is it really worth it? What do we need our children to be? Healthy, clever, independent, self sufficient and happy. But if we introduce them to this way of living, they may achieve none of these. I have heard mothers and fathers saying ‘We have to take our child to a psychologist or a dietician because she doesn’t eat, does not do home work, does not go to bed in time or does not want to listen to anything we say.’ Suddenly everything becomes a great dilemma. All because nothing was done in time to prevent such difficulties developing. The parents are the ones who should know better than anyone how to handle the problem. Nowadays it has become normal in most families. Sometimes once the parents do realise, it’s little too late to say that and try to come to terms with the fact that it was totally their fault. It is a little or a lot too late. So, in the long run when it gets out of hand, one’s forced to consult professional help and that often leads to financial problems and even to separation, divorce etc. which causes further damage to the children’s well being and future. Why do we put ourselves in such a difficult position when we know it could have been different and much better if we had reacted in time? When a child from such a background grows up, they become unruly, disorganised, impatient and also lose confidence. The whole of life depends on habits developed when they were kids. They weren’t disciplined or taught what’s right when they were growing up. Most children who become obese are the targets of bullies who tease them, call them names etc. As a result they become self conscious and ashamed of themselves and begin to hate themselves. They get depressed which leads to them to consume more food as compensation and that makes matters worse. We the parents feel helpless and miserable and often label ourselves failures. Things will be worse when they become adults. They often repeat what they learnt from their parents’. They bring up their children the same way as their parents and create a similar situation, although some of course may learn to live differently. The only way to avoid this and end this recurrence is to be a good judge and a good parent to your own children. One should take control of the handling of children and take into account that bringing up a child is the most responsible job that there is in the world. Being a good parent is not a piece of cake. Before we get to the point of being a parent, we must not forget that once we were also children. Our memories may give us good examples, whether we had a good childhood or not. How were we treated, what have we become of it? Many questions may be put without answers. So, do we have to continue to do the same if we were victims of a sad childhood? Let me tell you how I grew up. Since I was a little girl I have known to eat healthily. Eating chocolates, burgers, ice creams, plenty of fancy pastries, bread etc. was only done on a special occasion. Our every day diet contained, for breakfast, sometimes a porridge cooked with a handful of unboiled wholemeal rice with a juice of special fresh local herbs and with either coconut milk or diary milk and a piece of molasses. I loved it as a child, it had a creamy taste to it and was quite filling for the mornings. Rarely we had a slice of bread with butter and jam to go with the cup of milky tea. We also had butter with marmite and bread sometimes. Very seldom that we were able to eat our traditional breakfast which was made of rice flour. For instance, we make a crispy round pancake with a doughy roasted middle part with an egg poached in the middle which is called hoppers. (The name came from British colonial times as they found it hard to pronounce the word “Aappa”. That’s the traditional name). However, these kind of breakfasts were made only on weekends as they take a lot of time. Even though we had servants in most households in Sri Lanka, people did not want to waste time on a week day in homes where the parents went to work every day. I feel proud and happy of the fact of having being born and brought up in a society which valued a healthy life style. It has given me an advantage when it came to bringing up my own children in a healthy way. When my eldest daughter was born I had no experience of bringing up a child except the memories of my own childhood. Yet, I was lucky to spot a book of Dr. Spock’s on how to bring up children. Together with that book , my own memories and some help and advice from my husband who was born and brought up in England, I managed to do everything, and I have no regrets. Then when I had the second girl, I followed the same method and they both have quite the same habits and tastes too. Neither of them enjoys too many sweet things, fried food, ready made foods, or food which is too boiled. They enjoy eating fresh vegetables, fruits and fruit salads, brown bread instead of white (although occasionally they do eat white bread, ice cream and chocolate and so on). Not that they are totally against the kind of food that children mostly like. I also make hamburgers , pizzas, spaghetti, and lasagna., but only from time to time. I love my kids too much to let them grow up unhealthily. That was the reason why I started when they were young. If I hadn’t done so, perhaps if I started a little too late, they would never have got the habit of eating this way. Frankly, I did not know that the things like too much sugar and salt isn’t good for health. As a child I always had sugar with my tea even though we did have healthy eating habits. It’s Dr. Spock’s book which explained that from the beginning one should not introduce the strong tastes like sugar and salt to the taste buds of infants. One other thing which I picked from his book was that you should explain that he/she is the child and that you are the parent especially in the first two years. If not they eagerly prepare to take control of the parent even starting at the age of 1 year. I have frequently observed mothers struggling to make children understand that they should eat at the right time, and go to bed at the right time. The child find it’s irritating when the mother or the father is trying to make them do what they think is right when the child has adopted an unruly way of life even during its first six months of life. Infants seem to follow their regular habit much more than adults as that’s all they have to worry about when they are infants. They have no other concerns. Therefore, it’s our job to tell them how and when they should follow an every day routine.
