“Healthy Food, Happy Moves, Healthy You,” a group of children chant, holding up placards with the slogan thought of by them, featuring fruits, vegetables and wholemeal bread. Music starts and the students follow a sequence of dance steps. Between the moves, they are asked to identify healthy and unhealthy foods, the ones that make them ill and the ones that keep them smiling.It looks more like a dance class than a conventional nutrition lesson. But at a school in Nalasopara in Mumbai’s northern outskirts, this is part of a larger experiment: can music and culture make healthy eating more appealing to children—and, crucially, change what they choose to eat?For Class VI student Aarna G, the dance routine has built a memory of foods she needs. “A certain song and move reminds me of the chant after it, ‘Eat paneer, you will get calcium and protein.’ When we are told something through music, it stays with us for a longer period,” she says.The demonstration is part of Hip Hop Nutrition India, a programme being culturally adapted by Columbia University and the Mumbai-based Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action (SNEHA). The Nalasopara school is currently in the pilot stage, with focus-group discussions and surveys involving students, teachers and parents to understand eating habits, nutrition awareness and the factors that shape children’s choices.The experiment comes as Maharashtra takes a more direct approach to children’s food environment. The state Food and Drug Administration has issued a statewide order enforcing the Food Safety and Standards (Safe Food and Balanced Diets for Children in School) Regulations, 2020, which prohibit the sale, advertising and free distribution of high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt foods and beverages on school premises and within 50 metres of school gates.But the programme starts from a different question: Is changing the food environment enough if children themselves do not change their choices? “The focus groups with students, teachers and parents were aimed at understanding the daily lives of children — what they eat, where they eat, what they bring in their tiffins, whether they use the school canteen and what nutritional choices are available to them,” says Willibrord George, founder of St Willibrord Schools, the pilot site.Researchers are therefore examining more than nutrition knowledge. They are looking at food availability at home and school, parental purchasing decisions, children’s habits and the social and economic factors that make some foods easier to choose than others.Story continues below this adMaking healthy food culturally irresistibleFor Dr Olajide Williams, Professor of Neurology and Co-Director of the Columbia Center for Community Health at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, this distinction is central to the programme. “The overarching goal is to make healthy eating culturally irresistible,” Williams says.His experience in New York, he said, suggests that simply providing more information is unlikely to produce lasting change. “An information deficit alone is not driving the problem,” he says. The larger challenge, according to him, lies in the forces that shape children’s everyday choices: access, cost and culture, alongside what he calls an “attentional imbalance.”Ultra-processed foods, he observes, are supported by enormous marketing budgets that associate them with modernity, pleasure, celebrity and aspiration, while healthier foods receive far less attention. The programme cannot compete with the food industry on advertising spending. Its proposition is different: “Perhaps we can out-culture it” by giving healthy food the emotional appeal that commercial marketing has long given less healthy products — through music, celebrity, aspiration and cultural resonance.That idea is being tested in an adapted form in India rather than simply imported from the US.Story continues below this adAlso Read | Healthy eating: Nutritionist suggests 6 effective ways to maximise nutritionWhy India needs its own versionHip Hop Nutrition India is adapted from Columbia’s Hip Hop Healthy Eating and Living in Schools curriculum, which combines hip-hop, storytelling and mathematics to teach nutrition. Earlier US research cited by the project found improvements in children’s ability to interpret calorie information and a reduction in the calorie content of foods they purchased. But George says the Indian programme cannot assume that what worked in Harlem will work in Nalasopara.“When they did the study in Harlem, they found that their behaviour changes in children’s habits happened as they started doing hip-hop. That community was familiar with hip-hop. Now, if you go to a group which probably doesn’t do hip-hop, we don’t know. We may need to choose another popular and relatable dance form,” he says.That uncertainty is why the current phase focuses on cultural adaptation. “The American context may not work in India. Culturally, regionally, it is a little different. So, they said, let’s go and ask Indian students, Indian teachers and Indian parents,” says George.The challenge is sustaining these behaviours, making them the default. That, adds George, requires structural changes to the food environment, including making healthier food not just “cool” and culturally desirable, but also cheaper and widely available.Story continues below this adA 40-hour curriculum and a child’s takeawayThe survey and focus-group findings will inform an 11-module, 40-hour programme, bringing together nutrition, mathematics and music. The proposed curriculum includes music videos, comics, workbooks and teacher guides, with lessons designed to fit into existing school periods. Mathematics could be used to explain percentages, calories, nutrition labels and quantities, while music and physical-activity breaks are intended to make lessons more engaging and memorable.The bigger test: Can children influence home?The programme is aimed at pre-adolescent children because they remain closely connected to their families while beginning to develop their own preferences. Researchers want to know whether children’s knowledge and food choices change but whether they carry those lessons home and influence what families buy or prepare.The project describes this as a potential “ripple effect”, with children acting as change agents within their households. That matters in a country facing multiple nutrition challenges. NFHS-6 data for 2023-24 show a decline in childhood stunting and severe wasting, even as overweight and obesity among adults have increased.For the Nalasopara pilot, however, the next test is more immediate. The team will analyse the research findings, develop the adapted curriculum and pilot it at the school, followed by pre- and post-intervention assessments.Story continues below this adIf the pilot works, the longer-term ambition is to develop a model that can be adapted across Indian states and languages—including, the project proposes, through an AI toolkit that could customise music, lyrics and animations for different cultural settings. For now, though, the question is a simple one: Can a beat do what a textbook cannot?