Children's Nutritious Meals

There is no universal nutritional meal template that is suitable for all children. The core of a truly reliable children's nutritional meal is always "matching developmental stages, respecting individual differences, and prioritizing whole food sources." These three points are more effective than any Internet celebrity recipe with 100,000+ likes.

I have been a food education guide for children for 6 years, and I have seen too many parents who make mistakes. Not long ago, I met a mother from Hangzhou. Her baby just turned 3 years old. She strictly followed the recipe of a parenting blogger for half a year. She used a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients accurately every day. As a result, the baby was diagnosed with moderate iron deficiency anemia. When I asked about it, I found out that her baby was born with lactose intolerance. She had diarrhea after drinking the 300ml of milk per day called for in the recipe. She secretly cut the amount of milk in half. She also felt that red meat was not chewy, so she replaced the lean beef in the recipe with commercially available children's meat floss. It seemed that she followed every step, but in fact, she missed out on the core sources of iron and calcium, which hindered her growth.

What’s interesting is that current discussions about children’s nutritional meals can always be divided into two distinct groups. One group is the "accurate calculation party". They compare everything with the "Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) of Chinese Residents". The energy supply ratio of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats must be stuck to one decimal place. The intake of salt and sugar must be accurate to grams. Even the proportion of red, yellow, and green vegetables must be strictly allocated. This type of method is actually not useless. For children with allergies, developmental delays or underlying diseases, accurate calculations can indeed quickly fill the nutritional gap. However, if ordinary families do this, it is easy to turn eating into a performance appraisal. I met a father in Shanghai before who would set up a scale to weigh the vegetables before eating every day. The child became nervous as soon as he sat at the table, and in the end he developed anorexia nervosa, which was not worth the loss.

The other group is the "let nature take its course" party, which believes that as long as the child is willing to eat, he can eat whatever he wants without having to follow so many rules. This kind of mentality is of course no problem for families with good eating habits. Parents eat vegetables and meat every meal and rarely eat takeaways that are high in oil and sugar. The children will not be much worse if they eat the same. But if the parents eat fried chicken and drink Coca-Cola by themselves, it is basically a fantasy. I have seen too many children eating takeaways with their parents every day, and their blood lipids were found to be high before they were 6 years old.

To be honest, there is no need for ordinary families to go to extremes. My usual advice to parents around me is to use the "baby's fist" as the unit of measurement: a staple food as big as a fist (the thickness is best, and you don't need to eat brown rice and grains all the time, as the baby can't chew it and won't like it), and a high-protein food (pork, beef, sheep, fish and shrimp, eggs, soy products, etc.) that is as thick as the palm of your hand. You have to eat expensive things like sea cucumber and abalone (the iron content of ordinary lean beef is more than 10 times higher than sea cucumber), two fists of vegetables (at least half of dark green leafy vegetables), one fist of fruit, plus a small handful of nuts and a corresponding cup of milk. It is basically enough for daily nutritional needs, and you can’t weigh the weight on the scale.

The most controversial question among everyone is “should we feed our children snacks”? In fact, it doesn’t have to be black and white. Some nutrition scholars believe that as long as the products comply with the national standard of the "General Requirements for Children's Snacks", it is perfectly fine to eat them in moderation. For example, if a child is over 1 year old, adding some low-sodium soy sauce for seasoning is better than the child finding the food tasteless and refusing to eat it. Another group of food education colleagues believe that flavors, pigments, and artificial sweeteners should be avoided as much as possible. Eating too much can easily dull the child's sense of taste and make them less willing to accept the taste of natural foods in the future. My own experience is that a compromise is the best: try to add as little extra seasonings to meals as possible, occasionally take your kids to amusement parks, and don’t be intimidated when eating lollipops or chips with additives. You can’t let your kids lose control after drinking milk tea for the first time when they grow up.

A while ago, a parent came to me and said that she had been feeding her baby organic vegetables for half a year, but the baby was still deficient in zinc. When I asked, I found out that she never feeds her baby seafood because she thought it was contaminated by heavy metals. In fact, if you eat shellfish and marine fish purchased through regular channels twice a week, and each time you eat an amount as big as a child's palm, there will be no problem of excessive heavy metals. The zinc supplement effect is much more reliable than zinc supplement preparations that often cost hundreds of dollars. Oh, by the way, there is a consensus that regardless of whether you are eating well or not, vitamin D should be supplemented from birth to at least adolescence. This is not controversial. Other supplements should be taken according to the doctor's advice. Don't just follow others' supplements and buy them.

My own children were also picky eaters when they were young and refused to eat green leafy vegetables. I was also anxious. Later, I chopped up the vegetables and mixed them with dumpling fillings, or steamed them into vegetable dumplings with some corn flour, and gradually I accepted it. There is no child who is born a picky eater. It just depends on whether adults can put more thought into adapting to his chewing ability and taste. It does not mean that the meal must be made into a cartoon shape and posted on WeChat.com to be called a nutritious meal. Only when the child is willing to eat, does not have bloating and constipation, and the growth curve increases steadily every month, is it really useful.

In fact, making nutritious meals for children is really not that complicated. You don’t have to read popular science articles every day to see what’s missing, and you don’t have to buy expensive imported ingredients. You can be more accurate by paying more attention to how your baby is eating. After all, the ultimate meaning of a nutritious meal is that the baby eats happily and grows strong.