280. Introduction Of Solid Food Into Diet

The child's nutrition gradually passes from an exclusive milk diet to one that is in part solid food. It is well for the development of the capacity for digestion that the admission of solid food be not too long delayed. Following weaning the food will, for some time, continue to be largely liquid, preferably cow's or goat's milk, or if necessary an infant food. The latter should be selected at first somewhat with reference to its composition and solubility, the presence of a desirable proportion of ash and protein and the absence of a large proportion of unmodified starch being essential points to consider. At eight to ten months a beginning may be made with solid food, and for this purpose there is nothing better than properly cooked egg (without leathery coagulation of the white), especially if a cereal food is the main part of the diet. As the child develops, milk should be eaten freely, and there may be added thoroughly cooked cereal preparations, crackers, stale bread, and so on gradually to the same plain foods that are eaten by adults.

281. Simple Diet Best

For a few years, mothers should rigidly adhere to the policy of a simple diet from which is excluded pastry, cakes, sweets, condiments, indeed all desserts that generally are nutritively one-sided preparations which tempt the palate to the exclusion of simpler and better balanced materials. No more serious mistake can be made than to allow a child to acquire a distaste for plain food because of indulgence in desserts that are usually highly flavored and attractive to the taste. The result is that unless controlled, the child discards the simpler foods best calculated to promote vigorous growth, and substitutes preparations that carry large proportions of starch, sugar, and fat. There is much to commend the practice of a separate table for the children in the nursery, where temptation is out of reach.

This habit of simple living on meats in very moderate proportion, eggs, milk, cereal foods (from the whole grain), vegetables, and fruits, with a very small minimum of the usual desserts, may well continue through all the growing period and become a life habit.

282. Mixed Diet Desirable

A fairly well mixed diet should be encouraged. While individual tastes cannot always be overcome by education, an exclusiveness of diet on the part of a boy or girl, such as relative excess of meat or bread and butter, or even milk, should be discouraged, and every effort made to include in the menu a reasonable proportion of vegetables and well ripened fruits, without neglecting the more substantial foods.

283. The Candy Habit

One parental weakness cannot be too strongly condemned, i.e., permitting a child to acquire the candy habit. It is true that pure candy is made of sugar, which, under right conditions, may play an important part in the animal economy. But sugar of itself exercises no constructive function, and when the free use of sweetmeats is permitted, generally at all times of the day, a desire for wholesome food is much lessened, and the child is robbed, sometimes disastrously and always unfortunately, of the nutrition to which it is entitled. The eating habits of some children are nothing short of abominable, and for these habits parents are responsible. It is a trite saying, but a true one, that the intelligent farmer's calves and pigs are fed more rationally than many children.