The answer to this is not that simple😕…..
My child’s health and vitality 🆚 me 🆚 my parents 🆚 their parents, have definitely reduced.
Various factors are involved in this, e.g ✔️physical activity
✔️eating patterns
✔️food choices
✔️stress levels
are a few which I can name.
⏳Physical activity levels have reduced drastically, people used to walk, 🚵cycle, run and jog for need to complete their daily chores. Nowadays we use 🚗valet parking facilities to get off right in front of the shopping mall gates. We use escalators instead of the simple flight of stairs, while going up a single floor even. We don’t even get to use the stairs for boarding an 🛩️airplane. Our 📺TV, AC, main door entrance, have a remote now, n no need to get up even for that. We play virtual games and think that we are being “active” socially.
⏳Eating patterns have deteriorated. People used to have healthy breakfast early in the morning🌅, but now having “no breakfast” is the IN thing. Children n mothers alike feel that it’s too early to eat anything before going to school, so the child is given the leverage to drink a glass of milk🍶 or not even that before going to school. Dinners have become the heaviest most meal 🍔🍟🍢of the day and it is consumed late at night while watching a movie or drama or a match. Unlike our ancestors, who ate with sunset 🌇and called it a close of the day meal. Eating alone, eating while watching TV and eating in beds or while reclining on a couch has become the norm now.
⏳Food choices have taken a 360 degree turn. Processed foods, ready to eat meals🕙, half done meals, foods with preservatives, foods with years long shelf lives, genetically-engineered-to-yield-crop foods are the norm now. Fresh foods🍉🐔🍳, which were in common use of our earlier generations, are now available at double or even higher prices with tags like “organic”, “home grown”, and “healthy”.
⏳Stress levels have also changed us internally as a person and externally as a society. A 🚼pre schooler has to face the stress of being accepted at the school’s entry test, a fifth grader is stressed every alternate week because of the class assessment 📝schedule, a teenager uses excessive food to overcome the stress of appearing n clearing in entry tests of two dozen 🏫universities, then there is a stress of looking like the models shown in the TV or on the billboard. You can keep on counting for hours, but these stresses of the modern world will not finish.
So all this takes a toll on our body, and our health. We as parents want short cuts, either in form of easy to cook lunches or in pills to overcome hyperactivity or nutrients deficiency . We cannot just expect it to happen with a switch on button, rather we have to make huge changes in our thinking and in our lifestyles.
Our generation started using such facilities as a 👑luxury, but now these are necessities📥, which if not met by any parent gives them a guilt for a lifetime. So, yes we are changing as a society, as a person…… But what’s the direction of this change ❔❔
Mariam Khan, RDN
DIET & NUTRITION COACH
