All about nutrition

Food is a crucial, essential, desirable, and enjoyable process! Unfortunately, there are situations where this "enjoyment" becomes undesirable and stressful for children. Children are not born with an understanding of the principles of healthy eating. Knowledge about food is acquired by children through their parents' own experiences. Starting from childhood, a child should have the correct daily routine for eating. There must be rules for food. This prevents situations like "today you can eat at night," but "you can't eat anything in the morning," or "today sweets are allowed," while everything else is "forbidden" at other times...

Let's discuss the importance of food, the model, the ration, and the reasons for food refusal.

From the day of birth, every parent knows that their main task is to care for the child. Proper nutrition is the main factor for the growth of a child. Growth depends more on the important functions of vital functions and adaptations. Good nutrition helps prevent many chronic diseases and enables us to maintain good health.

It is important for the organism to receive 6 types of food substances:

1. Proteins - essential structural elements for life that make up the body's cells.

2. Fats - provide energy to the organism (they contain essential vitamins and other essential nutrients), fats are needed for growth, energy.

3. Carbohydrates - essential energy source, the two main types of carbohydrates: complex - less quickly absorbed energy, which is found in cereals and legumes, and simple - quickly absorbed energy, which is found in sugar, honey.

4. Water - 50-75% of our body is water, the organism uses water in all cells and tissues, water regulates body temperature, facilitates food digestion, and regulates all vital processes, so it is important to receive a sufficient amount of water every day and eat such foods that contain water.

5. Minerals - Organic and inorganic substances that are dissolved in our body, found between cells and in cells, inorganic substances make up 4% of the body. For normal existence, a person needs to receive daily 100 mg of the main mineral and up to 100 mg of microelements.

6. Vitamins - are substances that cannot be produced by the body and are essential for maintaining life. It is necessary to receive high-quality products saturated with vitamins.

Food considers not only the process of obtaining food but also the inclusion of various functions in this process. For example: oral-motor functions (chewing, swallowing, biting) adaptive functions (the use of adapted products such as nipples, bottles, etc.) social functions (rules and methods associated with food, the desire for something, etc.).

The feeding of our children

This stage continues approximately for 4 months until lactation or manual breastfeeding begins.

Child's first feeding model Language orientation in feeding movement, which includes taking and closing the mouth with the tongue, is not disturbed. This model is recommended for the first 4 months. Starting from 4 months, feeding movement begins in the direction of up-down language orientation, which is the true feeding model. For 12 months, the child begins to move away from sucking towards chewing, but fixation is not necessary and feeding should occur with the forward-backward movement of the tongue, hence the sucking continues. Starting from 18 months, the child starts chewing with the upper-lower language orientation, fixating the chewing and swallowing the fixation of the jaw. After 24 months, it is possible to swallow without fixation of chewing.

In the first days of life, the newborn adapts to the environment. The selection of food (natural - artificial) continues. If the child does not need food after breastfeeding and sleeps later, the breastfeeding is divided. From 2-4 months, the baby is given breast or artificial feeding from the mother, which he/she takes at night, should consist of 1/6 of his/her body weight. From 5-6 months, additional feeding starts, and the baby starts feeding on average five times a day.

From 6-8 months, the baby should receive 1000-1100 ml of food per day, which should only be given from breast or artificial feeding, and includes porridge, fruit puree, vegetable puree, meat, fish, chicken liver, and cereals. From 9 months onwards, the daily diet of the baby gradually resembles the adult menu. Up to 1 year, he/she should consume 1200-1300 ml of food per day.

Why is there opposition to breastfeeding?

The reasons are many: the mother smokes, drinks alcohol, and is stressed. The breast milk changes, the baby experiences allergic reactions, and dental decay begins. The child rejects the breast and protests against feeding. Whether sedative or appetite stimulant, vaccination is resented, and the mother does not have patience. In extreme cases, oral-motor dysfunction is determined, which affects its sucking ability.

The menu of a 2-year-old should not be too varied, but it should be properly balanced. From the age of 2, we move from 3-4 main meals to full-fledged feeding 2-3 times a day, involving a variety of products such as meat with vegetables, cereals, soups, dairy products, and legumes. According to the "plate principle" food should be distributed as follows: 40% vegetables, 35% meat, 20% grains, 5% fruit.

Factors affecting nutrition are: 1. Medical problems: 1. allergies, 2. infections caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi (angina, stomatitis, gastroenteritis), 3. enterobiosis (pinworms), 4. calcium deficiency (rickets), 5. high blood calcium level, 6. chronic heart diseases, 7. gastrointestinal diseases, 8. metabolic disorders, 9. malnutrition. Malnutrition is caused by unbalanced nutrition, reducing resistance to infections. Malnutrition is influenced by neurological, neurobiological, and psychological disorders, such as dysphagia, depression, attention deficit, hyperactivity syndrome, sensory problems, loss of appetite, bipolar disorder, and autism.

Oral-motor rehabilitation includes the elimination of chewing, swallowing, and speech functions.

With psychological problems, the desire for food should be encouraged and expressed socially. Compliance with food rules and norms, compliance with table manners, food behavior, and the like.

With uncontrolled eating habits-

Using kozinak, chancellery, unhealthy motor functions improvement, such as bringing sweets to bed, taking food from the fridge, etc. Positioning control during mealtime, body alignment, controlled chewing.

With sensorial integration difficulties-

Receiving stimuli, processing, and returning adapted responses. At this time, it is possible that the child cannot control adapted textural food. Certain types of foods with specific temperatures or structures are not accepted in the mouth, etc.

Children with connections to food:

"Pretentious eater" - Eats very little. This term contains neophobia. (Neophobia is a rapid reaction to new food, a type of adaptive stage of the child's typical development, which occurs at the age of 2-3 years, but with resistant eaters, it is more difficult, with reluctance, tantrums, drawing with temper, etc.) Despite the fact that "pretentious eating" is considered a normative stage of child development, it is still important to note that it carries the risk of weight loss. These children, despite their neophobic eating, still gain weight and are considered healthy. Monitoring is necessary. It depends on the caregiver's responsibility and upbringing, whether or not pretentious eaters will catch up with their peers in growth. It is also important to note that "pretentious eaters" still find it difficult to accept new foods. Such situations are common. If we do not have such children in the family, it is possible that our grandchildren will face such difficulties in the family circle, or even we ourselves were like this in childhood. Constant chewing and superficial difficulties are also considered a risk, which leads to incorrect and inadequate food intake. E.g., it is difficult for such a child to sit at the table with the family, he refuses to eat bread and soup at home. After every hour, he eats yogurt, asks for an apple slice, which makes his diet constantly unbalanced. Selective or selective eating is when a person eats and drinks only what they consider safe, avoiding everything that they consider dangerous. Selective eating can last into adulthood. This is not a risk because the child still receives the necessary nutrients for growth.

"Resistant eater" - The child takes only one category of food, e.g., only meat or only vegetables. They refuse food based on factors such as taste, shape, color, or other physical characteristics. They reject unfamiliar food because they already have selected a safe food category for themselves. Their ration consists mostly of 10-12 products, which provides enough nutrients for growth. When they are offered unfamiliar food, these children instantly reject learning the taste of food and do not become familiar with the correct taste. They develop a dislike for certain food textures and odors. This can lead to sensory integration dysfunction or oral-motor chewing difficulties. This problem is not inherent and can be difficult to manage emotionally. However, with evaluation and proper intervention, stressful behavior changes.

Discomfort during mealtime - Many children sit at the table with reluctance, prepare food, start eating kozinak, but after 15 minutes, they refuse, start squirming, do not want to eat anything, and feel uncomfortable. If children are allowed to snack on blended foods (porridge, yogurt, smoothies, fruit puree, etc.) at long intervals, they simply cannot learn to chew food properly and do not get enough saliva and gastric juice. As a result, caries develops. They also have an increased risk of upper respiratory infections due to frequent swallowing and a sedentary lifestyle. All of this contributes to discomfort, and the child avoids this unpleasant activity.

Only tasting bland food - Children receive a preference for bland foods because glucose is the easiest source of energy. Children really love bland food...