Children's nutritional powder

For the vast majority of healthy children who have a balanced diet and whose growth curve is stable within the normal range, there is no need to regularly supplement children’s nutritional powder.； Only when there is a clear gap in nutritional intake, picky eaters that have affected growth and development, or when there is clear supplementary advice from a doctor, it is necessary to choose as needed under professional guidance.

To be honest, I have been a volunteer in the Nutrition Department of Maternal and Child Health Hospital for almost two years. Eight out of ten parents who ask about children’s nutrition powder are asked. The first thing they say is, “My baby doesn’t like to eat. Can I get enough nutrition by drinking this?” ”Last week, I met a mother who came to inquire with a school bag of imported nutritional powder samples. She said that her 3-and-a-half-year-old baby didn't touch any vegetables and only ate fried meat. She weighed two pounds less than her peers. She had been giving her baby nutritional powder for half a month and was wondering if it could replace the vegetables for dinner.

In fact, the current attitude of the nutrition community towards children's nutritional powder is not black and white. Conservative nutritionists have always discouraged regular purchases by ordinary families. The core reason is very simple: most common dietary supplement children's nutritional powders on the market are essentially "sweetened milk powder with added vitamins and minerals." In order to please children's tastes, many products include white sugar and fruity additives in the top three ingredients list. Drinking too much will not only make your child's taste more picky, but may also increase the risk of dental caries and obesity. , not to mention that if you drink too much for a long time, fat-soluble vitamins (vitamins A, D, E, K) will accumulate in the body, and even poisoning reactions will occur in severe cases. Previously, our department encountered a 5-year-old boy. His parents gave him two nutritional powders as snacks every day for six months. The physical examination showed that vitamin A exceeded the critical value. The doctor stopped all supplements on the spot and adjusted it for more than a month before returning to normal levels.

However, many clinical nutrition doctors feel that there is no need to treat children’s nutrition powder as a scourge. Think about it, if your child gets sick repeatedly when he first enters kindergarten, has a poor appetite for a week or two in a row and spits out his saliva, or has severe food allergies and cannot touch seven or eight common ingredients, and his daily diet is simply not enough to meet the nutritional needs for growth, and his growth curve has been declining for two or three consecutive months. At this time, drinking nutritional powder for a short period of one or two months is much better than letting the child carry it and ultimately affect his height and weight development. My cousin's baby was severely allergic to wheat, milk, and eggs, and could only eat a few foods. When he was 3 years old, his growth curve dropped below the 3rd percentile, so the doctor ordered him to drink special medical children's nutrition powder for three months, and at the same time, he slowly added hypoallergenic complementary foods. Now that he is 5 years old, he has reached the 50th percentile and is bouncing around.

When choosing nutritional powder, many parents always focus on the advertising slogans of "grow taller" and "beautiful". In fact, there is no need at all. You take the package and turn to the ingredient list first. If the first three ingredients include sugar, maltodextrin, and food flavors, just put them back. To put it bluntly, it is just sugar water with some vitamins added. Drinking it will do bad things. If you really need supplements, you should give priority to health foods with the "Blue Hat" logo, or products with "Formulas for Special Medical Purposes" clearly marked on the packaging. Don't buy the three-no products that "cure picky eaters" and "grow 3 centimeters in a month" as advertised in WeChat Moments. Spending money is a trivial matter, but spoiling your baby is a big problem.

Don't think of nutritional powder as a universal "lazy tool". I met a mother before who didn't like to cook. She made a cup of nutritional powder for her baby every morning for breakfast. Sometimes she made a cup of nutritional powder for dinner when she was too lazy to cook. As a result, her baby had three cavities at the age of 4, and a blood test revealed that she was zinc deficient - - Most of the nutrients in nutritional powder are artificially added, and the absorption rate is far lower than that of natural foods. Just like if you eat a vitamin C tablet, it will definitely not be absorbed as well as eating a fresh orange. Nutritional powder can only be regarded as a "temporary patch" at best, and it can never replace a good meal.