Weird diet fads blamed on moms

Do you avoid mushrooms because you think they might be poisonous? Or do you slurp down excess curd because you believe it might make you fairer? This might sound zany for some, but many amongst us have weird food inhibitions that may have been inherited from our mothers. A recent study has revealed that most teenagers form bad dietary habits because of mothers with food hang-ups.
Shiny Chandran, a city-based dietician says, “During the growing years, few mothers give children the freedom to eat what they want. Some don’t allow kids to try meat. Their choice of vegetables also manipulates the child’s diet, which is not healthy as there might be nutrients that the child could miss out on.”
Mothers often end up labelling certain foods, ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The child grows up with the same prejudice and this dominates his or her eating pattern. Says Neha Ramkumar, a school student, “My mother hates brinjal and mushrooms and keeps telling me how they aren’t very essential for our diet. Each time my friends offer me baingan-ka-bharta, I just refuse it. I don’t think I am missing anything by not having it.”
But feeding a child can often be an uphill task for mothers. To make it easier, some come up with fancy theories to lure their child into eating.
“For the past one year, my mother has been on some sort of strict diet. She has just one cup of fruit juice for breakfast. Since she keeps insisting, my sister and I follow the same diet. As we are used to this system, now both of us cannot get used to the idea of a wholesome breakfast any more,” laments Arjun N, an engineering student.