After the twelfth month of life a child's diet should gradually be made more varied. It is still necessary, however, to give relatively large amounts of fat and proteins. Atwater estimates that:

A child under 2 years requires............3/10 the food of a man doing moderate work.

A child of from 3 to 5 years requires......4/10 the food of a man doing moderate work.

A child of from 6 to 9 years requires......5/10 the food of a man doing moderate work.

A child of from 10 to 13 years requires... .6/10 the food of a man doing moderate work.

A girl of from 14 to 16 years requires.....7/10 the food of a man doing moderate work.

A boy of from 14 to 16 years requires.....8/10 the food of a man doing moderate work.

Considerable variation in children is noticeable during their second year as regards the amount of carbohydrate and protein that they can digest. Each one must be watched and the food adapted to its capacity. Between the twelfth and thirteenth months the average child eats five meals daily. The menu may have upon it cow's milk, bread, oat jelly, and broth of chicken or mutton. Sometimes children will not swallow bread as early as this. Between the fourteenth and fifteenth months well-boiled rice may be added to the broth, and the juice of an orange may be eaten. After the sixteenth month a little butter may be spread upon the bread, or meat-juice may be poured over it. Prune-juice as well as orange-juice may be eaten. After the eighteenth month the child may have eggs. A peach in season, or part of a raw apple carefully scraped, may be eaten, especially if the baby is inclined to be constipated.

From this time on a variety of cereals may be used. It is my own experience, however, that children in their second and third years do best upon a simple and not too varied diet. Of the cereals, oatmeal is best adapted to the needs of the majority. Only dry stale bread should be given to children. Educator crackers are wholesome and enjoyed by many. In the latter part of the second year, especially if the child is constipated, Graham bread or rye bread may also be eaten. A child under three years of age should not be given candy or sugar except as it is a part of other foods. A little may be put upon cereal foods, or later cooked in foods. If given in concentrated form, it is especially likely to derange digestion.

During the last part of the second year most children may begin to eat meat. The breast of chicken or squab, a little scraped beef or lamb chop, is the best. They do not need meat as a daily article of diet until they are three years or more old. At this time a child may also begin to use some of the simplest vegetables, such as peas, young beans, or squash. A greater variety of fruits may be permitted. But for the most part they should be cooked. The berry fruits are especially likely to derange digestion. Strawberries, blackberries, currants, and gooseberries should not be eaten raw, and only in small quantities when they are cooked.

The only beverages permissible for the youngest children are water and milk. After the fourth year a little weak cocoa may be given occasionally. Tea, coffee, and alcoholics should not be used even by older children, as these beverages affect the nervous system too strongly and lessen appetite. The deplorable results of their administration to children of one, two, or three years of age are frequently seen by medical men who are practising among the poor and the ignorant.

Game, salt food, pork (except bacon), pickles, salads, rich sauces, tomatoes, beets, turnips, cabbage, fancy bread, pastry, cake, pancakes, sweet preserves and other very sweet things, cheese, nuts, and fruits containing many seeds should not be given to children. Bacon fried hard is relished and easily digested, and with milk, cream, butter, and eggs, it is for them an important source of fat. All foods should be cooked simply.

Children should eat only at regular times. This should be an invariable rule. Until they are three or four years old it is best that they eat alone and that they be not tempted by the many foods that adults eat. Even after this they should eat only the least hearty and the simplest meals with their parents. The hearty meal of the day ought not to be immediately before the time of sleeping.

Between the ages of four and eighteen or twenty it is still necessary that relatively larger quantities of food be eaten than is needed in adult life, in order to provide for greater tissue building, greater loss of heat by radiation from the relatively larger body surface of youths, and generally their comparatively greater activity.

Standards have not been established by the methods adopted in the study of adult diets, although some attempts to do so have been made. But enough individuals of the same age have not been studied to make it possible to draw satisfactory conclusions. Most studies have been made upon groups of children between the ages of nine or ten and eighteen. Averages deduced from these studies are not applicable to all the intermediate ages, and much less to the extremes.

These figures1 afford some idea of the habits of the children studied, but are too few to justify the deduction of standards.

The United States Department of Agriculture2 has suggested a standard for a child from six to nine years of 50 per cent, of what an adult needs and for a boy of twelve, 70 per cent. The United States Bureau of Labor advises 75 and 90 per cent, for approximately the same ages; Rowntree 50 and 60 per cent, and Engel 57 and 70 per cent. However, this is not a satisfactory basis, for the adult standard varies from Chittenden's to that of Atwater's or from 2000 to 3500 calories.

The habits of generous eating necessary in childhood are deleterious in more advanced life, and children as they approach maturity and young adults especially, should be taught to be more abstemious.

1 Bulletin 223, Office Experiment Station, United States Department of Agriculture.

2 Year Book, 1911, page 365, United States Department of Agriculture.