Between the first and third year of our children's lives, important milestones in their development occur: the weight is multiplied by two naturally, and your brain reaches 80% of its size. For this, it is important to ensure the child proper nutrition by providing daily dairy, fruits and vegetables, and two to four times a week, fish, legumes and meat.
However, there is a percentage of children who do not comply with food recommendations and in these cases, the Nutrition Committee of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics (AEP) in collaboration with the Ibero-American Federation of Nutrition (FINUT) recommends parents value the option of offering your children growth milks which by their nutritional profile can help to complete certain deficiencies.
Main deficiencies of the children's diet
Dr. Moreno Villares, from the pediatric department of the Hospital 12 de Octubre and expert in Clinical Nutrition, along with Dr. Dalmau Serra, from the Nutrition and Metabolopathies unit of the Hospital La Fe, in Valencia, recently made a review of growth milks They have published in the journal Pediatric Act.
Babies and More has had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Moreno Villares about the feeding of children, their main nutritional deficiencies and the role that growth milks can have in their diet.
According to the doctor, it is common to find children between one year and three with nutritional deficiencies due, mainly to two factors:
- On the one hand, the lifestyle that marks today's society has a great responsibility in what we eat.
Sometimes, hurries and stress prevent proper eating based on fresh produce and homemade stews Rich, nutritionally speaking. Inappropriate forms of cooking, precooked food or even speed when eating food, can bring deficits in the diet.
- On the other hand, there are young children who have a hard time eating well and all kinds of food. Their tastes are very limited and some even make disgust at certain textures in the mouth, so systematically reject important foods.
These types of situations can cause imbalances in the diet, which are translated in the form of:
Lack of Omega 3 fatty acids, because more than 50% of children do not consume the two servings of fish per week recommended
Lack of Vitamin D in 90% of children, for not consuming the recommended daily ration of dairy
Excessive protein intake
21% of children do not consume the recommended amount of iron
The role of growth milks
After 12 months, if the baby is no longer breastfeeding, it is usually recommended to start with whole cow's milk or growing milks.
And this is the dilemma we are facing parents: what kind of milk is better to offer our children? Are growth milks necessary?
Dr. Moreno Villares believes that growth milks should be another option to shuffle, depending on the personal situation of each family, their lifestyle or the type of food the child carries.
And if our child has a balanced diet, eats everything and is strong and healthy, whole cow's milk will be enough. But in the cases described above, or in children who do not eat wellDr. Moreno recommends opting for growth milks, since being enriched can help to reach the nutritional requirements for this stage, since:
Reduce protein intake (which we have already seen that in the diet of children is excessive) since cow's milk is richer in protein than growing milk
Increase the DHA contribution up to 65% per glass of milk
Increase the iron supply up to 42.9% per glass of milk
Increase the vitamin D intake up to 20% for each glass of milk
But not all growth milks are the same
But the fact that a milk brick contains the "growth" label does not immediately make it the ideal food for a child, since we can find such milk with an excess of sugars that should be avoided in the children's diet.
This could be solved if there is specific legislation for growth milks (as is the case with infant formulas or continuation formulas), but today, Growth milks are subject to the same composition and safety considerations as other dietary products, so it is the parents' job to read the labeling, evaluate and compare.
In summary, the growth milks could be a good option if the child's diet presented deficiencies or was unbalanced, but always reading the labeling of the brands to choose the one that best suits the nutritional needs of our children.Via Pediatric Act. Growing milk, what can they contribute to the feeding of the young child? Doctor J. Dalmau Serra and Doctor J.M Moreno Villanes
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