Organic Is Good, Junk Food Bad: Indian Parents Teach Kids

Aware parents of the latest generation are teaching their young the significance of organic foods and green practices.

- Athar Parvaiz

A McDonald’s or Taco Bell outlet is where you’d find Meenalochani Srinivasan and spouse on a weekend a few years ago, but now you are likely to spot the couple at a designated pickup location, eagerly awaiting their organic food delivery from Jivabhumi, a local organic food provider.

While food and nutritional safety never populated her thoughts before, 29-year-old Srinivasan, a former software engineer residing in Bengaluru, found herself fraught with worry when she learnt she was going to be a mother. “I wanted, with all my heart, to provide my child with the healthiest foods possible and so I started researching online. That’s when I discovered organics,” she says.

Now, with her son all of two, Srinivasan and family have become “permanent” converts. Having gradually morphed her kitchen into an all-organic one, she is currently in the process of upgrading to organic bath and beauty products for the family and natural cleaning agents for the home. The Srinivasans have placed an embargo upon all things unhealthy, non organic and processed, and to appease old cravings for junk foods, they turn to home made organic options such as millet pizzas, organic sweet potato fries and jaggery based organic wheat cookies.

Srinivasan continually builds her knowledgebase on organics by frequently logging on to organic food discussion platforms online and is an active member of the public Facebook group, ‘Organic Consumers (Bangalore)’, where like minded people have formed a community to share and source information about organic foods, practices and products.

GROWING ORGANIC COMMUNITY OF PARENTS