Children's dietary health knowledge

Many parents may not be so clear about the dietary health knowledge of infants and young children, so they always feed their babies food that is difficult to digest. In serious cases, it may directly lead to food poisoning. Feeding them according to their age is the most scientific way. It is best for them to eat semi-liquid food, which is easier to digest.

(1) Pay attention to the eating habits and appetite of young children. It takes 3 to 3.5 hours for the stomach to empty after feeding on breast milk or cow's milk. Children over 1 year old have a wider variety of foods, so the stomach empties and the feeling of hunger occurs about 4 to 6 hours after eating. If the diet is too varied, it will interfere with the child's stomach's adaptability, hinder physiological digestion and nervous system activities, and also affect appetite.

(2) Fixed feeding frequency: One-year-old children are in the stage of forming all functions such as appetite, gastric juice secretion, gastrointestinal tract and liver. To ensure the supply of nutrition, children aged 1 to 3 years should eat no less than 5 times a day. In addition to three meals, a snack should be added at 10 am and 3 to 4 pm. Eating too much will not only affect children's appetite, but also increase the accumulation of fat in the body. If the number of meals is too small, it cannot meet the physiological needs of young children.

(3) Determine the standard amount of food you eat each day and night. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that “overeating will damage the spleen and stomach”, so you should control your food intake. Infants aged 1 to 18 months should eat 1000 to 1100 ml of food per day and night, and those aged 18 months to 3 years should eat 1200 to 1300 ml of food per day and night.

(4) Children should chew their food slowly and not eat too much. They should endure a little hunger. The same amount of food will produce different feelings of fullness if chewed at different speeds. The finer and slower the chewing, the greater the feeling of fullness. The food cooked for children, in addition to having a certain fragrance, must also be fine, broken, rotten, and soft. Avoid fried, sour, spicy and other irritating foods.

(5) Reasonably arrange the calories of daily food. According to research, the digestion of fatty foods takes place between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. each day, while the fat consumed after 6 p.m. enters the "accumulation" process. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid increasing nutrition after 6 p.m., otherwise it will easily make the body gain weight. Generally speaking, dinner should be less than lunch. Specific calorie distribution: 20% in the morning, 10% to 15% in the morning, 30% to 35% at noon, 10% to 15% in the afternoon, and 20% in the evening.

(6) Adjust the five flavors of pungent, sweet, sour, bitter and salty to a reasonable level. In particular, condiments containing a large amount of irritants can cause excessive secretion of gastric acid and lead to stomach problems. You should also eat less fatty and sweet foods to prevent obesity from an early age.