OUR BABIES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 22, 30 November 1910, Page 60

OUR BABIES.

(By

HYGEIA.)

Published uuder the auapices of the Society for the Health Woiues and. Children.

’‘lt is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.”

Inquiry re Hard Tucker. CjJ f FATHER in a leading position in f | one of our cities writes as fol- | lows:—“You urge us to make the children eat hard tucker so that they may use their teeth and jaws. While there are plenty of sincere believers in what you say, we are bothered by the difficulty of finding a variety of hard foods. How are we to give the children milk and milk puddings, on which they seem to thrive very well, .though I admit that their teeth don’t develop as they should? I have alwaja wished to keep to the milk and egg and cereal diet in preference to meat, vhich, I have the idea, brings chilt a to hand rather too quickly in this climate. Now I can see that meat will develop the teeth and jaws, but even at that one can’t give an unlimited number of hard biscuits.” Reply. Under the conditions of modern civilisation there is always a risk of children becoming overfond of 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 development crises. Dr Clouston, speaking as lecturer on mental diseases at Edinburgh University, said: —“My experience is 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 flesheaters, having a r.ving for animal food too often and in too great quantities. I have found also a large proportion of the adolescent insane had been flesheaters, consuming and having a craving for much animal food. . . . It is in such children that bad habits are most apt to be acquired at puberty, and I thoroughly agree with Dr. Keith, who for many years has preached an anti-flesh crusade in tire rearing of children up to eight or ten years of age.” Without going to extremes, it is unquestionably desirable to use meat very sparingly in the case of children, and it is an 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 their unaided teeth. (See “Feeding and Care of the Baby,” pages 34, 47, and 109). The normal relish of flesh food in a child who has not been spoiled by being given

meat in abundance will cause him to make the most of any small residue that may be left on a bone. Meat Diet and Teeth. I must now return to the direct issue raised as to the effect of meat-eating on the development of teeth. Quite apart from the important objections just referred to, a meat diet does not even tend, as our correspondent assumes, to the formation of sound, good teeth. One often finds children who are given large quantities of meat with deplorably bad teeth. Far too exclusive attention has been directed to the question of the socalled nutritive composition of food in relation to the development of the mouth, jaws, teeth, salivary glands, etc., whereas the main factor is the amount of masticatory work which a given food calls for and the amount of work actually bestowed on it by the individual child. Excellent jaws of teeth may be built up for life in the first seven years of existence on a diet largely animal or almost exclusively vegetable, provided that attention is paid to ensuring due successive work for the organs of the mouth in the form of sucking, tearing, munching, chewing, grinding, etc. One cannot say that tearing or biting off bits of sugar-cane with the front teeth is better .than gnawing or tearing at a meaty bone, or that chewing sugar-cane necessarily affords better exercise than chewing or grinding a piece of tough meat by means of the back teeth. In either case the main question as regards the growth of teeth and jaws is how much work does the particular kind of food tend to induce on the part of the child, and how far have the parents fulfilled their duty towards their offspring by teaching it through example and precept to make full use of its masticatory organs. We ean well understand our readers expressing astonishment that one should suggest any possible virtue in sugar-cane as regards teeth, since cane-sugar of all things is held up to the most execration a-s the natural enemy of the teeth. In reality it is not the sugar itself that is at fault, but the concentrated form in which it is given and the undue quantity which tends to be consumed in these circumstances. Sugar is as necessary as any ing incident, which occurred in the experience of one of the Plunkct nurses:— other constituent of food—a point very interestingly exemplified by the following

A* niaitmtlo*. A mother had been feeding her b* on eaws’ milk modified in a way whC' she thought made it equivalent in position to human milk. However, baby, though it did not lose weight an* had no definite ailment, became so soft* pale and flabby—the kind of conditio* commonly resulting from the use of to® much starchy or sugary food, such, fog instance, as ordinary condensed milk OS patent baby foods. On the nurse found that in preparing tha milk the mother was adding an ounce? and a-half of solution of sugar of milk instead of that quantity of sugar of milk itself, the result being that the baby received only a third of the proportion! of sugar in its food that Nature allows 1 . The adjustment of this mistake caused a rapid improvement in the child’* 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 as, “I believe in giving a baby plenty of fat,” or “Don't you think it would ‘firm* up and put on weight if we gave him more flesh-forming material?” when all the time, for ought she knows, excess, not deficiency, of fat or proteid may have* been the sole fault in the food. So far as chemical composition is concerned, the essential point is to conform to the laws of Nature. In the ease of a young baby the proportions of sugar, fat, and proteid found in normal mother’s milk forms the safe guide, and during the( first few years of life there should bei no wide departure from these proportions. On page 53 of “The Feeding and Care of the Baby” will be found illustrations showing the fat, flabby condition, with deficiency of bone and muscle, 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 I am concerned in showing just now is that mark?i ed disproportion in any of the three necessary constituents of food may produce a very similar result. The moral is—“ Follow the guidance of Nature.” Flesh-former*. One finds that few people have any true realisation of the meaning of the! term “proteid” or “flesh-forming material.” If one tells a mother that there is a deficiency of flesh-forming food in her child's diet she tends to jump to the conclusion that what the child needs is necessarily more meat or flesh. Thia is a very natural conclusion, but it is entirely erroneous. The red blood and the red muscle or flesh of a baby are built out of the white milk of the mother, and the organs of the young child can form similar flesh and blood out of vegetable proteid, such as the gluten o£ flour, the albumen of oats or peas, ete.