OUR BABIES.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13904, 1 December 1910, Page 2

OUR BABIES.

(By Htokia.) (""Weekly Press and Referee.") INQUIRY Be"hART> TUCKER. A father in a leading position in one of our cities writes as follows:— "You urge us to make the children eat hard tucker so that they must use their teeth and jaws, l&nil* there are plenty of sincere believer* in trliat you say, we arc bothered by the difficulty of finding a variety of hard foods. How are we to give the ehUdren milk and milk puddings, on which they seem to thrive very we] though I admit that their teeth don t develop as they should? I have always wished to keep to the milk and egg and cereal diet in preference to meat, which, I have the idea, brings children to hand rather too quickly in this climate. Now I can see thar meat will develop the teeth and jaws, but even at that one can t give an unlimited number of hard biscuits." Under the conditions or modern civilisation there is always a rusk of children becoming over-fond ot meat. and it is found that such habits tend in the direction of nervous instability, lack of control in all directions insomnia, and special risks at puberty and other developmental crises. Ur. Clouston, speaking as lecturer on mental diseases at. Edinburgh Jmversitv said:— "My experience & that the children who have the most neurotic temperament and diathesis, and who show the greatest tendency to instability of brain, are as a rule flesh-eaters, having a craving for animal food too often and in too great quantities. I have found also a large proportion oi the adolescent insane had been flesheaters, consuming and having a cravin°- for much animal food. ... H is in"such cluldren that bad habits .ue most apt to be acquired at puberty, and I thoroughly agree witn Dr. Keith, who for many years has preached au anti-flesh crusade in the rearing of children up to eight or ten years oi ago-" ~ . Without going to extremes, it is unquestionably desirable to use meat very sparingly in the .cas© of children, and it is aY inestimable benefit to them if what little flesh they do consume has to be worked for. Let children gnaw or tear the meat off the bone with tbetr unaided teeth. (See "Feeding and Care of the Baby," pages 34. 47. and 10D). The normal relish of flesh food in a child who lias not been spoded by being given meat in abundance will cause him to make the most of any small residue that may be left on a bone.

| MPiAT DIET AND TEETH, i I must now return to the diroct ! j«ue raised as to the effect of meat- ! catinix on the development of teeth. , Quito nnart from the important ob.iec- '■ tions iust referred to, a, meat diet docs not even tend, as our correspon- : den- assumes, to the formation ot pound, good troth. One often iir.ds children who are fjiven larp;e quantities of moat with deplorahlv l«wl teeth. I'ar too, exclusive attention has been oirect;ed to the question of the so-called ' tiutritivo composition of foo<l in relation to the development of the mouth, ; j.nvs, teeth, salivary gUiids. etc., ' whereas tho main factor is the amount of masticatory work which a i food calls for and the amount of work I actually bestowed on it by the inui- ; vidual child. Excellent jaws and teeth i m.iv be built up for life in the first ! seven years of existence on a diet ''■ largely* animal or almost exclusively I ve-Fetable, provided that attention is I n-aTd to ensuring duo successive work for the organs of the mouth in the. 1 form of sucking, tearing, munchiiif-, \ ohcwiiitr prrindiiiii, etc. One cannot say j that "tearing or biting off bits jof sugar-caiio with the front ! troth is better than gnawing !or tearing at a meaty bone, or that ; chewing Mictar-cane necessarily aft'or<ls j better exercise than chewing or grindi iim a piece of meat by means !of "the back Teeth. In either case the ■ main question as regards the growth lof teeth and jaw* is how much work ! docs the particular kind of food tend ito induce on the part of the child. 1 and how far have the parents fulfilled [ their duty towards their offspring by I teaching it through example and preI coit to make full use of the masticai tory organs. Wo can well understand ! our readers expressing astonishment '■. that one should suggest any possible virtue in sugar-cane as regards • teeth, since cane-siigar of all things is held tin /to the- most execration as the natural enemy of the teeth. In reality ;it is not the sugar itself that is at j fault, hut the concentrated form in j which it is „iven and the undue quantity which tends to he consumed in these circumstance*. Sugar is as necessary as any other constituent of. food—a 'point very interestingly exemplified by the following incident, which 1 occurred in the experience of one of I the Plunket nurse*:— AN ILLUSTRATION. A motlicf bad been feeding her baby on cows' milk modified in a way which I she thought made it equivalent in coini position to human milk. However, the 1 baby. though it did not lose weight and' had no definite ailment, became 1 soft, pale, and flabby—tho kind of eoni dition commonly resulting from the uso of tMo much starchy or sugary food, * such, for instance, as ordinary con- ". densed milk or patent baby foods. On ■ investigation, tho nurse found that in ! preparing the milk the mother was I adding an ounce and a-half of soluj tion of sugar of milk instead of that I quantity of sugar of milk itself, tho result being that the baby received I only a third of tho proportion of sugar :in its food that Nature allows.. Th© adjustment of this mistake caused a rapid improvement in the child's health and condition. Pallor was soon replaced by rosy cheeks, and the pasty flesh soon .became firm and healthy. Nothing strikes one as more absurd than the haphazard remarks one often hears from mothers or nurses, such its, J "I believe in giving a baby plenty cf - fat," or "Don't you think he would 'firm' up and put on -weight if we gave him more flash-forming material?" when all the time, for aught she knows, excess, not deficiency of fat or proteid may have l>oeii the sole fault in the 1 food. So far as chemical composition is concerned, the essential point is to ' conform to the laws of Nature. in the case of a young baby the proportions of sugar,' fat and proteid found I in normal mother's milk forms the safe guide, and during tho first few..years ' of life there should be no wide departure from these On page 33 of "The Feeding and Caro of the Baby" will be found illustrations showing "the- fat, flabby conditfor,, with deficiency of bone and muscJoj characteristic of young animals when not supplied with" enough proteid or fleshforming material. This is exceedingly significant—see what is said on the page in question. However, what lam concerned in showing just now is that marked disproportion in any of the three necessary constituents of food may produce a very similar result. Tho moral is—"Follow tho guidance of Nature." FLESH-FORMERS. - Oil© finds that few people have any true realisation of tho meaning of the term "proteid" or "flesh-forming material." If one tells a mother that there is a deficiency of fleeh-forming food in lior child's diet she tends to jump to the conclusion that what the child needs is necessarily more meat or flesh. This is a very natural conclusion, but it is entirely erroneous. The rod blood and the red.muscle or flesh of a baby are built out of the white milk ol : the mother, and the organs of =* the young child can form similar flesh and blood out of vegetable proteid, such as tho gluten of flour, tiie albumen of oats or peas, etc.