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Tiny tots put together a long & healthy centipede that was good to eat!

Getting your toddler to wolf down veggies is a prize-winning task! There’s a lot of hard work involved and somehow the battle is never ending. To add to parental woes,junk food is such an easy winner. In an aim to deal with deteriorating food habits amongst children and address parental concern,city-based nutritionist and diet consultant Aditi Mehrotra has stepped in to make a difference. Mehrotra runs Arney’s Backyard,a unique and tested model that engages children in the process of promoting healthy eating habits through nutrition intervention programmes in schools. With a steady growth on the graph indicating a rise in the health problems stemming from low physical activity and faulty food habits among children,a drastic step needs to be taken to curb the growing pediatric health disorders feels Mehrotra,who,this Monday spinned an interesting class for students of Small Wonders School in Mohali. And out came a long,very long centipede that made the most of homemade chapattis and veggies! “Children love it when food becomes fun and parents need to make initiatives to make meals interesting. Children are not willing to eat their meals brought from home,there is a lot of food wastage from their tiffin leftovers. The last meal eaten is dinner and tiffin becomes the most important meal for every child. Keeping all this in mind,a need to revolutionize and reinforce the importance of eating healthy tiffins was felt. This activity collectively brought together the entire schoolchildren who learnt this concept through fun,” mentioned Aditi as she got children from classes nursery upwards to put together the healthy centipede! As many as 500 students brought in paranthas and chappatis along with homemade vegetables that made the Centipede’s body while carrot and beans sticks filled in for the centipede’s legs! “For the sauces we used cooked spinach puree for a green sauce while cooked tomato,carrot and beetroot puree made for a red sauce and a white sauce made with atta instead of maida was used,” explained Mehrotra as thrilled children went about adding legs to the healthy creation,er,creature! “It’s little effort that goes a big way in getting children to eat healthy and this was one step in that direction,” sums up Aditi. Now it’s over to Mummys and Daddys!