All you need to know about children’s nutrition Li Jiaxian

90% of the children's nutritional problems that you are struggling with do not need to be solved by supplements. A balanced daily diet adapted to the child's growth stage can cover all nutritional needs. Supplements are always just a cover-up option for dietary gaps. There is no need to follow the trend.

I just received a consultation from a mother in Shanghai last week. Her baby is only 3 years old. There are 8 kinds of supplements in the locker at home. Lactoferrin, DHA, lutein, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and multivitamins are piled up like a small drugstore. As a result, the baby is clamoring for snacks at mealtimes. She has not gained weight in half a year. A blood test also found a slight overdose of vitamin A and a lack of iron. To put it bluntly, parents are led astray by the marketing rhetoric of “it’s better to have more than nothing”. They feed supplements as daily meals, which in turn takes away their children’s appetite for normal meals.

Regarding whether to take supplements, there are actually different voices in the industry: the traditional child health school insists that healthy children only need to eat well and do not need any additional supplements. Taking too much supplements will increase the metabolic burden.； Practitioners of functional medicine will take into account that children nowadays generally do less outdoor activities and eat more highly processed foods, and recommend regular supplementation of 400-800IU of vitamin D. My own practical advice is to make a compromise. If your baby is exposed to the sun for less than 1 hour a day, supplement with VD. For other nutrients, first check whether the daily diet is sufficient. Don’t just stuff it into the baby’s mouth.

Two years ago, I went to a county in Sichuan to do charity science popularization. A grandmother asked me if my 5-year-old son, who is always picky about food and has yellow skin and thin skin, should buy the zinc supplement oral liquid shown on TV? I looked through my grandma’s food list and found that every meal consisted of kimchi and white rice. Occasionally, I would stir-fry green vegetables with a lot of salt, and I would only eat meat once a week. I said at that time, don’t buy zinc supplements yet. Steam an egg for your baby every day, stir-fry lean pork mince, eat chicken liver twice a week, and wait for a month before taking another look. Later, my grandma specially asked someone to send me a message, saying that her baby was eating well now, her face was rosy, and she was fine without taking any medicine. You see, there is no need to waste money on things that can be solved by eating.

Oh, yes, there are still a lot of people arguing about "can babies drink pure milk after 1 year old?" Some people say that they must drink formula milk until they are 3 years old, while others say that pure milk is fine. Let me tell you something objectively: as long as your baby is not allergic to milk protein, he can drink pure milk after 1 year old. There is no need to buy high-priced formula milk - formula milk is essentially nutritional fortification for children who do not eat well in complementary foods. If your baby eats a balanced diet of meat and vegetables in complementary foods, pure milk will be much more cost-effective. Of course, if your baby is lactose intolerant and has diarrhea, you can switch to lactose-free milk or sugar-free yogurt. You don’t have to stick to pure milk. You can even choose goat milk. It is true that the protein absorption rate is slightly higher, but the price/performance ratio is low. You can choose based on your family conditions. There is no need to just buy it based on what others say is good.

Some parents asked me if they could buy children’s soy sauce and children’s salt for their children? My own two children have never had special children's condiments before they were 6 years old. Just add a small amount of ordinary low-sodium soy sauce. I have looked through many ingredient lists of so-called children's soy sauces, and most of them have cartoon packaging. The sodium content is no lower than that of ordinary soy sauce. It is purely IQ tax. The same goes for choosing snacks. Don't believe what is written on the package as "for children only." Just look through the ingredient list. Don't have white sugar, margarine, or fructose syrup in the first three places. If the sodium content is less than 300 mg per 100 g, it is basically qualified. When my children are hungry, I will also buy them original seaweed and unsalted nut chips. I never buy those children’s biscuits and children’s juices with fancy packaging. To put it bluntly, they are just ordinary snacks with more sugar added, and they are twice as expensive.

I usually don’t weigh anything accurate to the gram when cooking for my baby. I just follow the “rainbow principle”. The more colors of vegetables in the bowl, the better. Red tomatoes, yellow corn, green broccoli, purple cabbage, and some lean meat or fish and shrimp. The staple food is occasionally mixed with brown rice and sweet potatoes. My baby loves to eat it, and after eating it, the growth curve fluctuates within the normal range, so there is no problem.

In fact, to put it bluntly, children's nutrition is really not that complicated. Many people make it very mysterious, either because they want to sell your product, or because they have not really been exposed to the feeding scene of ordinary families. Just remember, eating well is the root, and supplements are the leaves. Without the roots, no matter how lush the leaves are, they won’t last long. If you are really worried about what your baby is lacking, go to a regular hospital for a serum nutrient test and follow the doctor's advice to supplement. Don't just buy a bunch of them and pay the IQ tax, which will end up tormenting your baby.