FEEDING THE CHIEDREN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 394, 26 March 1908, Page 2

FEEDING THE CHIEDREN.

Spkaking at a meeting at New Plymouth lecently Lady Plunket said that thousands of mothers have to feed their children as best they can. Amongst the very poor the grossest mistakes are made. Infants are not infrequently given such a tides as hard boiled eggs, cheese, sops, and other items to the comprehensive dietary known as “ what we have ourselves.” Assuming, however, that the mother has sufficient intelligence to avoid such lethal dietetic errors, she has three classes of food from which to select a substitute from for human milk —patent foods, coudeased milk, and human milk, more or less modified. Generally speaking, these foods are deficient in fat, too rich in something else, and lack the auti-corbutic elements. Also there is in human milk an ingredient that helps to form food for the brain. An infant’s brain doubles its weight the first year of the child’s life. Cow’s milk has not this, as a calf is born with as much intelligence as it will ever have. This alone must weigh with mothers. Condeired milk is deficient in nutritive properties. Lastly cow’s milk. Though cow’s milk resembles human milk much more closely than do patent foods or condensed milk, there are important points of difference. Cow’s milk has a hardy curd, and is adapted for the digestion of an animal with four stomachs. The human infant has but one, and that is adapted for the reception of a milk with a soft curd. So what mothers must aim for is a food that resembles as closely as possible human milk. We referred ip a previous issue to humanised milk,' and any medical man would be only too pleased to explain its preparation to mothers.