SUNSHINE DIETS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1939, Page 8

SUNSHINE DIETS

GUARDING BABY FROM COLDS. Colds even if they are the order of the day just, now, are preventable. The number and severity of common colds can be greatly decreased if the child has had his system built up with foods containing those accessory food factors that combat respiratory infections. It is now clear, as a result of nutritional research, that a faulty diet may be the cause of low resistance to cold infections. It will be a pity if baby should be exposed to the infectious germs before his resistance to them has developed. For, unlike most other infections, he does not acquire immunity from further attacks, but the membranous lining of the respiratory system really becomes more susceptible. In fact, it is possible for a cold to spread and affect the whole system, perhaps localising in the lungs, causing pneumonia, and weakening and exposing the system to an invasion of T.B. germs. A cold in the_head is highly infectious and dangerous 10 infants and children, and it must be the mother’s duty to protect her baby and child from the germs, irrespective of hurting anyone’s feelings. No one with a cold or sore throat should be allowed in the room where baby or the toddler plays or sleeps — and when out of doors .the mother must still exercise supervision and keep anyone suffering with a cold right away. Realising these dangers, the mother should not take baby into shops or, indeed, any area where sunshine and fresh air cannot penetrate. And when mother herself has contracted a cold and has perforce to attend to baby, she will have 4° most particular now. Being compelled to come close to baby, she must protect him from her breath by covering her mouth and nose with a gauze mask sprinkled with eucalyptus. Baby should net be put down on the bed near the mother’s pillow. The mother should wash her hands with a medicated soap before handling him, and should keep her handkerchiefs well away from him. If she has to use a handkerchief while attending to baby or to his foods, her hands should be well washed again before continuing her task.

In the Open Air. Apart from this rigid attention to all details in keeping infection from him, his general management, his open-air life, his sun-kicks, good feeding habits, and close attention to his bowel elimination should be adhered to more rigidly than before. The child should be taught to breathe properly and to exercise his lungs to their vital capacity, out in the open air. Sunshine and fresh air, apart from being antagonistic to cold germs, are guards of good health, and build up resistance to cold infections. The baby who has been naturally fed from birth till he is old enough for a mixed diet, along mothercraft ways, certainly has been equipped with means for building up an antiinfective campaign. If the baby who has been artificially fed were given a cow’s milk mixture modified to resemble the natural feeding as nearly as possible, strengthened in accordance with scientific records, and the requisite vitamin in fruit or vegetable juices given as well, he also should be on a sound basis for anti-infective purposes. Baby's system will be well strengthened, too, by the cod-liver oil emulsion added to his milk mixture in sufficient doses. The child on the mixed dietary, correct, and well balanced, who has been fortunate enough not to have contracted a cold, will be able to build up further resisting powers in his body when the correct foods are eaten consistently. A sufficient supply of whole milk, cream, butter, cheese, egg-yolk, yellow and green vegetables, fruits of yellow colour, given each day, are all sources of that vitamin that keeps the mucous surfaces healthy so that they form an effective barrier to germs. All animal fats—the fats of meat, fatty' fish, as well as those glandular organs of animals, the liver, kidney, and sweetbreads, are also convenient and effective means of adding this accessory food factor to the diet. Daily doses of fish-liver oils or irradiated foods are ways of eating sunshine—of getting additional doses of sunshine vitamin for the child who has become susceplible to cold infections.