Give them candy instead of karela (bitter gourd) and you’re living up to the one reason why children are obese: bad parenting.

The message hit home hard at a panel discussion on child obesity at Nutrience Kids Fitness Studio on May 2. There was a panel of experts spouting tips for parents on bringing up children the healthy way at the 2 Colonel Biswas Road fitness studio run by t2 columnist and nutritionist Hena Nafis.

“Child obesity means excessive calorie intake, little or no exercise and excessive TV viewing. It is the most neglected epidemic of modern times,” said Subrata Dey, senior consultant paediatrician and endocrinologist at Apollo Gleneagles Hospital.

Talking about the times, Anuradha Das, the former principal of Calcutta International School (CIS), said schools have to play parents since moms and dads of most children go to office.

“Parents look for schools where teachers shoulder some of the parental responsibilities,” Das said.

There were instances of parental trepidation as well — as in the case of Das banning colas and chips in the CIS cafeteria. “Parents argued the children would anyway eat chips and drink cola outside school with their pocket money. My point was clear... they could do anything after school hours, but on campus we had to do our duty,” she added.

“Another measure schools should adopt is to regularly check tiffin boxes for junk food,” she said.

Tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh was next up and instantly hit the “light” chord: “Well for once, stop calling us men the bread-earners as we have to do away with carbohydrates!”

The percussionist drew a parallel to music. “I come from a classical Indian background and my son wants to listen to Bollywood. It’s difficult to get him to do tabla riyaaz for even an hour. It’s the same with food,” he said, pointing at “marketing” as one of the evils behind child obesity.

“We’ve been so conditioned to believing that part of the whole ‘experience’ of watching a film is cola and popcorn. Why can’t we have healthy sandwiches and fresh juice? Because that sounds so wrong even to us,” he said.

Are children too young to go to the gym? That’s the commonest question that strength and conditioning coach Ranadeep Moitra faces. He repeats the same answer over and over again: “If a gym practises human primal patterns like climbing, crawling and squatting instead of heavy weightlifting, then the growth pattern of an adolescent is not affected.”

The last word came from Nigerian footballer Chima Okorie! “The child can eat whatever he wants to as long as he lands at 5am for football practice.” Amen!