THE DIET OF CHILDREN.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 270, 23 April 1875, Page 3

THE DIET OF CHILDREN.

Dr Fothergill in his work, The Maintenance of Health, says;—“ The plan of bringing in children to dessert about the hour of tea is not very desirable; the child loses its appetite for its own simple food, and has a natural craving after the diet of its elders, which is very unsuitable to its needs. Further, too, the food should contain the proper ingredients. In milk there is much fat as well as sugar, and children when suckling are commonly plump and fat; afterwards they grow lean and spare. This is too commonly the result of their being allowed to object to the eating of fat. There is a perfect craze amidst children upon this head; to whatever due, it is most foolish and deleterious. Fat is most necessary to the proper growth of tissues, and such being the case it is still more necessary to children. Imperatively necessary indeed it is; and when milk still formed a large portion of the food of the child up to adult life, fat was furnished to the system. Now, however, except as cream, milk is comparatively rarely used. Batter is a good substitute, as is also the fat of animals. But the rule among children is to object to fat, and how the little rebels ever came to so unanimous a conclusion as now exists, it is difficult to say. Probably from some impression that eating fat is vulgar and unrefined ! It is painful to see children at the table permitted to reject every particle of fat, and then too commonly in time compelled to take cod-liver oil; the fears of their parents restoring to them that firmness they should never have laid aside. Still more painful is it to know that the absurd caprice, if persisted in, will in all probability lead to such a condition as may result in tubercle. . For there is no doubt, however strong the inclination to wish it were otherwise, but that this abstinence from fatty food too commonly paves the way for consumption. The tissues do not get their fair and necessary supply of fat; no more does the blood ; the consequence of which is that these tissues are not only more liable to inflammatory change, but also that the inflammation instead of running the course usually pursued in a perfectly healthy physique, degenerates into a development of tubercle, which is too commonly fatal, in spite of efforts which, had they been made in time, might have been effectually preservative.”