Will that heavily-advertised ‘brain food’ help your child become smarter? Will all those DHA-fortified baby cereals and milks with ‘brain activators’ really help your daughter or son get better marks?

OK - I am no expert either on nutrition or brain development. But common sense counts still, and I remind you there is no substitute for a good diet and good teaching and studying. These will help your child, DHA or no DHA.

Two reasons for this:

1) It’s difficult for lay people like us to make sense of all the health-related news we get from the media. DHA may be good for your brain, but will DHA pills and DHA-fortified foods make you smarter? None of the manufacturers and marketers will tell you, but the pills and supplements are not proven yet, and we really don’t know yet what effect for good or bad they will have.

To take an example, while the body’s own testosterone boosts sperm production, fertility doctors only recently found that synthetic testosterone can make men infertile. Synthetic testosterone is still taken by athletes and body builders for more energy, and by men who want better erections, who don’t understand its risks.

2) I don’t trust advertisements! In India, advertisers are still rarely held accountable for the things they say. Advertisers and marketers know that if they say something is good for your brain, parents will spend a lot of money on it. Read a book on advertising. Know how you are manipulated.

Having a good balanced diet with enough exercise and enough rest, and studying well, will help your child do well in examinations and in life. If you want her to get more DHA, give her more fish or foods containing flax oil or seeds, but always as part of a balanced diet.

Susan Vinodh Pandian

Read some more about brain development:

1. Depriving a child of affection can affect brain development

2. Marijuana use disrupts brain development in teens

3. Using methamphetamine when you are pregnant can affect your baby’s brain

4. Brain development is compromised in premature babies

Besides ads for tobacco and cigarettes (read today’s news about how tobacco companies duped cigarette smokers with claims about ‘light’ cigarettes), remember this when you see ads for potato chips and all kinds of snacks, candy, medicines for colds and headaches, and baby foods.

Consider baby foods. Of course, it’s illegal to advertise any kind of baby food for children under two years old in India. But where there is money to be made and a will to sell, marketers will find a way.

Even though you cannot see advertisements for baby formula and Cerelac and other foods on TV and print media, most people – even educated people who should know better – seem to believe that they are in fact more ‘nutritious’ than ‘gentle’ than homemade foods. Baby formulas like Nan use the picture of a baby bird and it mother because it is illegal to use the picture of a healthy human baby and happy mother to sell baby food for children under two.

Baby food marketers also use attractive packaging and ‘free information’, sponsorships and ‘chance’ mentions in other media to create an aura that their products are better than anything a mother can easily provide from home. Cigarette companies regularly sponsor sporting events (for example, Benson and Hedges sponsor cricket).

I consider myself intelligent and immune to ads for any form of tobacco, but I have to confess that I am one of the dupees where baby food is concerned. I fed my son rather a lot of commercial baby food before I realized the error of my ways.