Children's nutrition and growth and development

Children grow and develop relatively quickly, so timely nutritional supplementation is very important. If children lack nutrition, it will often affect their growth and development, and even cause greater problems for their intellectual development. As parents, we should pay attention to good diet adjustments during childhood and pay attention to dietary balance. We must not let children develop picky eating habits. Let's take a look at this aspect.

Children's nutrition and growth and development

Nutrition is the material basis for ensuring the normal growth, development, and physical and mental health of children. Children's need for nutrients is higher than that of adults. This is because two requirements must be met, namely, the needs of growth and development and activity. Infants and young children in particular grow and develop most rapidly, requiring large amounts of protein and other nutrients, so this must be given attention.

After weaning, children need to have a balanced diet and eat as many different foods as possible to ensure the need for energy and nutrients and maintain a balance between nutrients, so as to avoid malnutrition due to nutrient deficiency or obesity due to overnutrition, which will affect the normal growth of children. Therefore, it is very important to cultivate good eating habits in children from an early age and not to be picky eaters or eat snacks randomly.

In addition to maintaining a good appetite for children, they should also develop a regular life, get enough sleep, and regularly participate in outdoor activities. This will help prevent disease, promote digestion and absorption of nutrients, and enable children to grow up healthily.

Children in poor rural areas suffer from severe growth retardation

Gong Limin introduced that since the reform and opening up, especially since the beginning of the 21st century, the health level of children in my country has improved significantly, and the rights to survival, development and protection of children have been fully guaranteed. In 2015, my country's infant mortality rate and the mortality rate of children under 5 years old dropped to 8.1‰ and 10.7‰ respectively. Both indicators have achieved the United Nations Millennium Development Goals ahead of schedule.

But from a national perspective, development is still unbalanced, especially for the 40 million children in concentrated and contiguous areas of special hardship, whose health and education are significantly below the national average.

The data provided by Huang Jian is even more shocking: the "Report on Nutrition and Chronic Disease Health Status of Chinese Residents" released by the Nutrition and Health Institute of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015 shows that the rate of growth retardation among infants and young children in my country's poor areas is 6 times that of cities, reaching a maximum of 23.7%.

Regardless of urban or rural areas, the anemia rate among infants and young children aged 6 months to under 1 year old is as high as 20%-30%. According to the WHO (World Health Organization) criteria for determining anemia as a public health problem, an anemia prevalence rate of 20%-40% is considered a moderate public health problem. It can be seen from this that anemia problems among infants and young children under one year old in China are a moderate public health problem.