General Suggestions

Unleavened crackers, raw cereal flakes and stale sundried pompernickle or whole wheat bread are the best dry cereal foods for children. If cooked cereals are served, crackers and wheat bread are not necessary at the same meal. A few black crusts or raw vegetables combine better with cooked cereals.

Soda crackers or thoroughly toasted unsweetened zwieback may be given occasionally for the evening meal in combination with sago, fruit gruels or jellies.

Do not feed a child fresh breads and cakes which contain soda, yeast or baking powder.

A child over three years of age may eat occasionally unleavened fruit cake, pancakes and fruit tarts which are prepared with eggs.

Never allow a child to eat ice-cream at the end of a heavy meal. Serve it at the beginning of the meal or during the afternoon.

Four meals per day is generally the best plan for a child, as long as it sleeps during the day-time. If it is fed on plain, non-stimulating food it generally takes a nap up to the age of 4 or 5 years, and sometimes later, while a child that is fed upon meats, beef juices, meat soups and excess of starch and sweets often refuses to sleep during the day-time at the age of two.

Meats and sweets or excess of any kind of food irritate the sensitive nerves and produce restlessness and sleeplessness in the child, and much unnecessary work and sleepless nights of the mother. Any normal healthy child can be trained in the matter of eating, sleeping, evacuation of the bowels and in other details like clock-work, if the proper conditions are furnished.

At the end of the third year the child may begin to eat well baked beans, peas or lentils several times per week during the winter, hey should be given at the noon meal, in combination with raw or finely mashed carrots, or with a tomato salad and raw greens. No more than two tablespoonsful should be given at one meal. Systematic training in chewing is absolutely necessary for a good digestion. If legume foods should cause gas on the stomach, they must be strained and given in the form of soups or purees. Walnuts may also be used. Give two or three at the end of the meal. For combination, see ".Menus for Adults." The amount of food should be increased gradually. At the age of 12 or 14, a child may eat nearly as much as an adult.

Moving picture shows, car and automobile rides require more nervous energy than strolling in the woods. Instead of supplying the system with plain nutritious foods, such as milk, nut preparations or wholesome sandwiches on such occasions, the excitable nerves are generally more stimulated by artificial foods: candies, cookies, sweet graham crackers, gums or by exhilarating (pure fruit?) lemonade or germ laden ice-cream.

Artificial lights and amusements of this kind, associated with nerve starvation, cause much eye trouble in children. Think of the amount of nervous and muscular energy expended during those hours in comparison with walks or other kind of natural amusements!

If the chewing of gum, candies and other fancies is permissible in cars and theatres, why not wholesome foods? A small satchel will hold an aluminum can with milk, a few napkins and other wholesome food products. If confectionery and ice-cream parlors and cheap restaurants were supplanted by hygienic food laboratories and pure water stands, saloons would soon be on the decrease.