Recipe for healthy kids

Recipe for healthy kids

October 2014

By Punya Srivatsava

Beautiful Children – The Parents’ Essential Guidebook for Raising Strong, Balanced, Healthy Children.Tarika Ahuja, Harper Collins, INR 299, 224 pages

Perhaps we really are what we eat! Macrobiotics is emerging as a viable alternative to the unhealthy diet kids these days are exposed to. To counter this problem and lay forward the goodness of whole foods, Tarika Ahuja has come out with this power-packed guidebook for parents on the significance of the macrobiotic diet, especially for children.

Ahuja starts the book with her story of having always been an unhealthy, lethargic and low-immunity child, courtesy the pre-birth trauma that she had to endure in her mother’s womb. She talks succinctly about how the turnaround in her life came when she was introduced to macrobiotics and realised that some of her hidden sickness as a child, weak immunity, chronic digestive disorders, low BP and early alarming osteoporosis were essentially ignored and required proper integrated attention. The book then further travels to gauge the similarities and symbiotic relationship between ayurveda and macrobiotics, with chapters on diagnosing a child’s health, dealing with veggie phobia, and learning to handle a child’s dietary cravings.

Endorsed by celebrated names in the wellness sphere, like Denny Waxman and Verne Verona, health educator and the author of Nature’s Cancer-Fighting Foods , Beautiful Children offers wellness suggestions for a healthy diet, lifestyle, recreational activities, and traditional medicine home remedies for common childhood problems. It also lists Taoist sound healing practices, simple and fun meditation techniques, recipes, information on supercharging the brain, improving memory and academic performance. The book covers the spectrum of information required by a parent to nurture his or her child. An added benefit of introducing a child to healthy food is that the whole family benefits, for the segregation between this food and that food drops down.

Ahuja’s attempt at emphasizing children’s health is laudable, as the book is a well written account of personal experiences and compassion for children and their health. I urge all parents and parents-to-be to go through this exhaustive book at least once, for an understanding of conscious parenting as well as healthy eating.