Baby Providing Proper Nutrition

Baby Providing Proper Nutrition

A child embarks on an eating journey the day it is born. This journey presents new experiences, challenges and opportunities throughout life. Positive, healthy feeding experiences from the start set children on the right path.

What should a child eat to each to achieve optimum health?

Nutrition Needs

From birth, for the first few months of life, the child’s total nutritional needs are met through are met through the mother’s milk, if the mother is in normal health.

Breast milk is the most complete, nutritionally adequate, pure, safe, clean and satisfying food for the baby.

After about 4 months, however, breast milk is no longer adequate to meet the baby’s requirements in full. The child must be introduced to semi-solid and then solid feeds gradually. However, it may continue to be breast fed for as long as possible, though it may get less of its nutritional requirements from breast feeding.

Quantity

By the age of one, the child needs aout 1,200 calories a day or nearly half of what adult requires. From then on, the child needs roughly an additional 100 calories every year, and by about the age of 12 may be eating a full diet.

Yet, the child cannot consume large amount of food at one sitting. So the young child needs to be fed 5 to 6 times a day to meets its daily requirements. This means that it may eat 3 meals. Frequency is very important in a young child’s diet.

Quality

Children Cannot eat all the kinds of food adults eat until they are 5 or 6 years old. Some dishes may be to heavy, too rich, or too spicy, or cooked in a manner that are difficult to digest. So, children’s food should be specially prepared. It should be tasty but not spicy, and easy to chew and shallow. At the same time, children should not be reared on soft foods alone. They need plenty of hard things to chew on, to develop strong and clean teeth.

Energy and Nutrient Needs

An infant grows faster during the first year than in the later years. Growth directly reflects nutrients intake and is an important parameter in assessing the nutrition status of infants and the children. Health care professionals measure the height and weight of infants and children at intervals and compare measures. A healthy infant’s birth weight doubles at about 4 months of age and triples the time it is one year old, typically reaching 9 to 11 kg. by the end of the fist year infant growth slows considerably; an infant gains less than 4.5 kg during the second year.

Vitamins, Minerals, and Water

Vitamins and mineral recommendations are based on the contents of human milk. Water is an important nutrient for infants and for everyone. The younger the infant, the greater the percentage of body weight that is present as fluids between the cells and in the vascular space-fluids outside the cells that are easy to lose.

Breast milk or infant formula normally provides enough water to replace a healthy infant’s fluid losses, but an infant who is exposed to hot weather, has diarrhea or vomits repeatedly needs supplemental water to prevent life-threatening dehydration.