Farewell, food of junk

Why spend thousands of pounds on a TV programme when you can round up every Auntyji in the British Isles for a just cause, asks Dr Saumya Balsari.

Our children are getting fatter and fatter (so are we, and so is Mrs. Arora last time she was seen bending over fruit at Beejay Kaycee Empee Mart, but that’s entirely another matter). Someone has decided enough is enough. Time to get tough. Kids’ stuff. Sterner stuff. Turner Broadcasting, which owns Cartoon Network, has created an Elfy Food animated series starring a band of goody-good elves out to capture healthy, magical foods from the evil Frank Farter and his monsters.

In October this year, Turner will broadcast an episode every hour in peak time to the 3.5 million children and 6 million adults in the UK who are likely to watch. Each episode features a different fruit or vegetable promoting healthy eating. Will it succeed where others failed? Teletubbies hasn’t quite done the trick on the four to nine-year-olds. The proof lies in the pudding. Nor have Tweenies and Fimbles slowed the pile of sweet wrappers. Little fingers are getting stickier and stickier still (like Blair’s current pre-election crisis).

It is evident that the Elfy Food series will have cost a few hundred thousand pounds to produce. Now, as every desi worth his or her salt knows, there is always a home-grown desi solution to everything. Obesity is a mere trifle - the desi has a solution to life itself. Even death. Actually, let’s make that death and beyond.

Why spend thousands of pounds on a television programme when you can round up every Auntyji in the British Isles (surely enough for several crack regiments?) for a just cause? Every school should have its own Auntyji. As it once had its own nurse checking for nits. What happened when the 3,000 school nurses in the country were taken off the job? Precisely. Healthy food is not the same as head lice, but you still need to call in the police. The food police, the Auntyji brigade.

The Auntyji is not to be confused with the dinner lady. Auntyji will merely watch each child and the spoon like a hawk or eagle. It’s a simple bird’s-eye view and rule of thumb: Fear will make the child gobble where it would otherwise dribble.

The next step will be to put Auntyji in every school kitchen. Forget Jamie’s School Dinners. Give Auntyji the plum job of apples a day. Auntyji’s a cool cucumber. She knows how to produce something out of nothing. She will defy any couch potato child to correctly guess just how many vegetables (including spinach and broccoli) are hidden in the delicious gravy.

Auntyji is no lemon. Nor is she a fruitcake. She’ll soon have every child eating out of her hand.

(Saumya Balsari is the author of the comic novel 'The Cambridge Curry Club', and wrote a play for Kali Theatre Company's Futures last year. She has worked as a freelance journalist in London, and is currently writing a second novel.)