OUR BABIES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 244, 9 July 1921, Page 3

OUR BABIES

(By

"Hygeia.”)

Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice thati to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” THE PLACE OF COW’S MILK IN THE FEEDING OF CHILDREN. This problem is much more complex than is generally realised* though the main points can be simoly stated. First of all we should get rid of the common idea that tho rearing of healthy children depends upon an ample supply of milk—say, cow’s milk oi goat’s milk. In reality half the peoples ji the world have been reared without any milk at all beyond that supplied to the children by their owii mothers. The use of milk derived from the lower animals has been eo slight as to bo insignificant. Tho Maori is a case in point; he had no cow’s milk and no milk supply, but his physique and the high position he rttninea on tho mental and moral plane prove that his food was all right for the building of a great race. An examination of the jaws and teeth of the old-time Maori shows that they were ideally perfect until we. ourselves brought in the corrupting influences of a sedentary, indoor, idle life, artificial feeding during early infancy, and cow’s milk and pap-feeding afterwards. Since then the teeth of tho Maori have become almost ai bad as our own. Milk is an essential article of human food only during the first year or so of life, and it would be infinitely better for the children, after they have reached Ifl months of age. and have developed a good set of teeth, if most cf their diet consisted not of cow’s milk and pap. but mainly of a judicious selection of such foodstuffs as crisped whole-meal bread, vegetables, raw ripe fruits, etc., and only a moderate allowance of milk, porridge, puddings, etc. EXCESSIVE USE' OF MILK. A great deal of harm is being done. In the United. States to-day by a school of extremists who have proclaimed that every child should have a quart of milk a day. They don’t really mean a quart as we understand it. but only a lirtlo more than a pint and a half, the American quart being 320 z., not 400 z., an in England. However, one English pint is certainly quite enough milk for a. healthy child at two years of age, and high authorities, such as Dr. Harry Campbell and snri' 3 of the leading dentists contend that children would do better if less than a pint of milk per diem were given, and if a larger proportion of the food were of a. character to ensure full exercise for th* jaws, teeth, and salivary glands.

THE LESSON OF THE EAST END. For the last 20 or 30 years the stock joke made by the West End nt the expense of the East End of London, when commenting on the way the East Enders feed their children, has been to say that they ”ffive them what’s coinfr,” and to illustrate this by Etories of infanta fed with pickles and salt pork, liver ana bacon, or cockles and periwinkles! On the other hand, the West Etid children of the Victorian era (which we have never got beyond, were brought up on milk and pap. and w,ere carefully safeguarded during their early years from raw fruit and anything that it. was feared might overtax their masticatory or digestive powers. The result is to be seen In London to-day. The children of the East End—brought up by parents with very crude ideas as to food and feeding, ana on wages which have averaged only from £1 to £2 a week—have far sounder jaws and teeth and far less liability to decay of the teeth than the pampered children of the West End. This strikes everyone who looks into the matter, especially the doctors and the dentists. The most casual examination of the children in East and West End schools shows the dental superiority of those who have had the harder fare. Of course, it would be quite wrong to jump to the conclusion that such facts afford any justification whatever for giving little children Bpecialls f indigestible forms of food, cucn as salt meats, shellfish, or pickles: but the fact in that very few parents,, even in the East End, have been in the habit of milking such serious mistakes, though most of the ordinary staple food used by the adults is certainly shared by the children. This is quite a natural and right procedure. The fac> is that once past infancy the masticatory and digestive power? of tho healthy child are far more vigorous than thos'i of the average adult. Provided a child ia taught to chew food thoroughly a few nuts or even a. small niece of raw turnip, taken at three or four years of a go, rarely disagrees, thongn many adults dare not take such foods. Firm, Hard, Muscular, Well-developed Children versus Big, Fat, Flabby Children. Dr. Harold Waller, who has been for many years the chief physician of a largo and important Infant Welfare Centre at Poplar, in the East End of London, draws special attention to tiio mistake of assuming that becf/ise a young child is big and fat that, therefore, he is doing well. Dr. Waller remarks how common the overfat, flabby type of child is in the perambulators of Kensington Gardens, and in an article on the -Hygiene of Infancy,” he says;— “These are the children who are allowed to feed on milk and starchy food almost exclusively, and whose parents, content with weight, mistake massive bulk for health. .... Tho chief mistake in these cases is the preponderance of starchy foods —bread, biscuits, potatoes, many of tno patent foods, milk puddings with a corresponding lack of muscle forming substance and fats. • • •_ There is an unwise tendency to quote with acorn a frequent saying among tho poor people that their infants have ‘just what they have themselves.’ ” , . . Speaking to the writer on this subject, Dr. Waller remarked how common it was to elicit some such reply as the following by remarking on the sturdy, jobu*& health of sonio Poplar child (say in its second nr third year), and by asking how much milk he was getting:— “Oh, that little nipper, 'e don t git no milk: leastwise very little. W’y, we only git a pint and a ’arf for the ole five of Of course, there is plenty of bad and deficient feeding in tho East End, and it would be better if more good, fresh cew’s milk were available; but the contrast of the East and West End forms a. good corrective to feeding children merely on miik and pap instead of giving them plenty of simpler, cruder, more normal foodstuffs which would, ensure hard work tor their teeth and salivary glands, ami give them the natural, healthy, and pgurous joy of active exercise.