Towards a healthier life

I remember reading somewhere that if you want to give someone permanent happiness, teach him gardening. It was while going through the newspaper that I came across this interesting article It is about a School in Indian city of Mumbai where they have successfully banished junk food from school canteen and substituted it with healthier alternatives grown in the School compound by the children themselves! Children were encouraged to cultivate crops which they could consume in their school lunch. Net result is that you have happier and healthier little gardeners who grow up with the satisfaction of having contributed to the betterment of environment besides adding to there own health. The world has changed rapidly over the last two decades. Advancements in Information Technology have revolutionized the way we used to do things. Globalization has resulted in nutritious traditional diets being replaced by junk food, which is heavily advertised by multinationals. Young impressionable minds find it glamorous to associate with these starchy, trans-fat full, patently unhealthy foods. One cannot fight the side effects of growing market economy with socialistic rules and regulations alone; instead, providing healthier alternatives and educating masses about them is the way to go. I admit that before reading this very inspiring news article I used to scoff at NGOs trying to teach people about environment sustainability etc, dismissing them as an attempt to gather publicity and government funds. But, thankfully I am wrong and there are some genuine and very brilliant attempts at preserving the Globe.