Three major snack culprits that damage baby's intelligence

It is children’s favorite food, but now many snacks contain a lot of artificial ingredients, which can harm children’s brain development and affect the baby’s intellectual development.

Trans fats

Ms. Zhuo has liked eating fried foods since she was a child, and this habit seems to have been passed on to her son.

Ms. Zhuo's son is in the third grade at a primary school. The school recently had its winter vacation, so Ms. Zhuo often fries lotus root cakes, lamb skewers, and five-spice sticks for her son at home, and both mother and son enjoy the feasts. But when she got up yesterday morning, Ms. Zhuo found that her son's mouth was full of blisters, so she quickly took her son to the oral department of the hospital for treatment.

When Ms. Zhuo received the test report, she was shocked: her son's blood viscosity was twice as high as normal. After asking about his lifestyle habits, the doctor said that this was because he consumed too much trans fatty acids. The doctor also reminded her that if she continued to eat like this for a long time, her chances of developing Alzheimer's disease would increase in the future.

Trans fat, also known as trans fatty acids, is generally produced by the "hydrogenation" technology of vegetable oil. Compared with general vegetable oil, artificial trans fat has the advantages of high temperature resistance, not easy to deteriorate, and longer storage time. Currently, the use of artificial trans fats is quite common in the American fast food industry. It is usually used to make foods such as crispy bread, French fries and donuts. Some oils that make pastries crispy, margarine, and cooking oils used for frying may contain artificial trans fats.

When pregnant women consume excessive trans fatty acids, they can be passed to the fetus through the placenta. Nursing mothers can also "feed" trans fatty acids to their babies through breast milk, thereby affecting their growth and development. They can also cause lipid deficiency in the brains of young children and affect their intellectual development.

Therefore, parents should pay special attention to the following foods: first, artificial fats, such as margarine (vegetable butter); secondly, fried foods, such as instant noodles, potato chips, French fries, etc. Some processed foods containing oil, such as instant soups, fast food, frozen foods (such as rice balls), baked foods (such as biscuits, cookies and bread), various instant paste-like foods (such as powdered cereal, coconut powder, sesame paste powder, etc.), various cream candies, peanut butter, and chocolate sauce may contain trans fatty acids.

Puffed Food

In recent years, puffed snacks have been very popular among children because of their crispy, crunchy, fragrant and sweet taste. However, medical experts at home and abroad believe that puffed foods are not truly safe or healthy foods. If children consume such foods for a long time, it will be harmful to their brain and physical development.

American nutrition and food experts gave advice many years ago: puffed foods contain more harmful metal elements such as lead and aluminum, and parents should not let their children eat these foods often. The reasons why puffed foods contain relatively high levels of lead and aluminum are: first, the processing of such foods often requires the addition of additives such as leavening agents, and some leavening agents (such as alum and sodium bicarbonate) contain more heavy metals such as lead or aluminum; second, the food passes through metal pipes during the processing process, and the metal pipes usually contain an alloy of lead and tin. Under high temperatures, the lead is easily vaporized, and the vaporized lead will contaminate the puffed foods. Eating puffed foods frequently can cause great harm to children (especially those under 3 years old).

When lead enters the body through the mouth for a long time, it will slowly lurk in the blood and bones and it is difficult to metabolize it naturally. Children are in the growth and development stage, and their absorption of lead is several times that of adults. However, children's lead excretion function is relatively weak, which makes it easier for lead to accumulate in the body. When harmful heavy metals accumulate to a certain amount, they will cause obvious damage to the human body's nervous, digestive, hematopoietic and other systems, especially leading to cognitive impairment or decreased thinking ability, and may even affect children's lifelong health.

Excessive intake of aluminum can mainly damage brain function. For example: it will interfere with a person's thinking, consciousness and memory functions, cause nervous system diseases, manifested as memory loss, visual and motor coordination failure, brain damage, intellectual decline, and in severe cases may lead to dementia.

Artificial Colors

Today's children's food comes in many varieties with exquisite packaging and bright colors, but some of these "colorful foods" containing pigments pose a potential risk to human health. Excessive or long-term consumption is harmful rather than beneficial to the healthy development of children.

During the stage of children's intellectual development, they need a large amount of high-quality nutrients such as protein and lipids, which artificial synthetic pigments cannot provide. At the same time, artificial synthetic pigments themselves or their metabolites are toxic, and arsenic, lead or other toxic intermediates may be mixed into them during the storage process, all of which will affect children's intellectual development and neurobehavior.

In addition, excessive intake of synthetic pigments can also cause allergies, such as asthma, laryngeal edema, rhinitis, urticaria, skin itching and neuralgia; certain artificially synthesized pigments act on human nerves, affecting the conduction of nerve impulses, leading to a series of symptoms.

It is recommended that parents strictly control children's diet, let children eat more natural foods, and try to choose foods without any artificial additives when buying processed foods. Children should avoid the influence of artificial colors through their daily diet. They should be cautious when buying brightly colored foods or drinks and avoid choosing processed foods with too bright colors. They should also develop the habit of reading food ingredient lists to pay attention to whether synthetic colors such as carmine, tartrate and Sudan red are added.