Sweets

The greater number of children have a natural craving for sweets. The important role of sugars in furnishing energy for the body has been discussed (p. 13), and the energy developed in active childhood necessitates the consumption of a larger proportion of sugar than is required by adults. The craving of children for confections, candy, etc., furnishes a true indication of the actual requirements of Nature, and it must be admitted that a certain amount of wholesome candy, like plain molasses candy, not only does most children no harm, but may serve them as an excellent food. The main difficulty with such forms of sugar, however, is that children are not furnished with a proper porportion of sugar with their meals, and the meals themselves are not so regulated as to prevent their becoming very hungry between times; consequently, if they can obtain candy, which satisfies them for the time, they eat too much, with the result of producing more or less dyspepsia and diminishing the normal appetite. If pains be taken to give such children a slice of bread and butter with a little honey or jam between meals and a proper proportion of saccharine food with their meals, they are much less likely to obtain candy surreptitiously and gorge themselves with it.

Simple forms of well-cooked pastry and of cakes with stoned raisins should be furnished as dessert occasionally. It is better to give such food from time to time with the meals under proper supervision than to have children indulge themselves in it.

Alcohol in every form should be absolutely excluded. If given during early youth it is particularly prone to develop a taste which may become uncontrollable in later years. The only exceptions to this rule are some sickly and anaemic children who are especially under the physician's care.

Habit

Many children acquire a habit of dislike or even disgust for certain articles of food, which become so fixed in later life that they find it very inconvenient, especially when placed in circumstances, as in travelling, where one cannot always obtain the accustomed diet, and giving in to such habit is often a serious obstacle to normal development. There are children who acquire a dislike for meat and who persistently refuse to take it, until they become anaemic and feeble, and there are others who refuse fresh vegetables, which they need. It is a great misfortune for a child to be indulged in such likes or dislikes. With a little tact and persuasion the repugnance can usually be overcome before the habit becomes rooted, and these questions are very largely a matter of proper education. How often is the physician baffled in the treatment of a severe disease like typhoid fever, which requires the use of a milk diet, by the patient's insisting that he has never been able to drink milk since childhood! If there be any taste which is natural to all men it is that for milk, upon which all must live during early infancy; and while it is better after a certain period of growth to restrict the quantity of milk in the diet, there is no reason at all why children should not retain a normal fondness for it.

There are, no doubt, cases in which it seriously disagrees (see p. 73), but they are exceptional as compared with the number of persons who can digest milk, when properly prepared, with perfect ease, but whose antipathy for it prevents them from taking it in the emergencies which may befall them in acute disease.

Children who object to vegetables can sometimes learn to eat them when cooked in an unusually attractive manner or served in soup.

Overeating should be guarded against, for habits of gluttony may be acquired in youth, especially between puberty and full development, which are never overcome, and which may lead to visceral distention and hypertrophy, obesity and other troubles, which develop in adult life. The habit of slow eating should be insisted upon.

Exercise

As a general rule, active muscular exercise in children disturbs their digestive processes far less than mental effort when taken immediately after meals, and every adult is familiar with the romping which children can undertake straightway after dinner, often, though not always, with impunity, whereas a proportionate amount of exercise on the part of an adult might produce a severe dyspeptic attack. It is well to allow children to play but moderately immediately after eating, and to require no mental work of them at such time.

For some reason the diet in girls' schools is often much less carefully regulated than in corresponding schools for boys. This applies not only in the United States, but it has been found the common experience in England and France; it is the more unfortunate, since girls from their greater delicacy of constitution, especially at the period of puberty, require more careful nurture. Differences in habits and exercise and outdoor recreation, no doubt in part, are responsible for the comparative lack of proper development in some girls' schools as compared with boys', but this should be recognised and regulated with as much care as the diet.

During the establishment of puberty it is best for children to avoid stimulating and highly seasoned food, and eating late at night, which is apt to excite the sexual organs reflexly and cause lascivious dreams. Alcohol should be wholly forbidden. Its use by young girls is said to bring menstruation earlier. Some articles of diet have a reputed aphrodisiac effect, but this is very slight; such are oysters, eggs, peppers, and champagne.