All About Nutrition: How to Become a Dietitian of Your Child

In the first year of a child's life, feeding him was relatively free of mathematical exercises for calculating the number of calories and balancing food groups. Most of the nutrition of your child was in the form of milk, breast or artificial, in which dietitians put( we hope) everything that is necessary. Even the solid food you gave the child, not bothering yourself with math or biochemistry. You were happy already that the child receives a wide variety of products, and hoped that all this is balanced by itself. During the first year, you spent more time feeding the child than for any other kind of one-on-one interaction, and your mileage deserves to be awarded a good / good wet nurse / breadwinner certificate.

You have already completed the "Baby Feeding" course, having familiarized yourself with the composition of infant formulas. Now it's time to learn more about how and why the

is useful for your grown up child.

The main goal of parents who take the "All About Nutrition" course is to get familiar with

balanced nutrition, which is to consume the right foods and in the right proportion. The diet is balanced if it includes in the correct proportion the so-called big five, five food bricks:

• proteins • vitamins

• carbohydrates • minerals

• fats

Let's take a closer look at each of these nutrients and find out what they give us and where we arewe get them.

Proteins( or proteins) are food for growth. Like steel frame structures and iron reinforcement in concrete, proteins are the structural elements for every cell in the body. Proteins are responsible for the growth, restoration and replacement of tissue. This is the only nutrient capable of doubling. Tissues grow by accumulating millions of proteins one on top of each other until each organ reaches its maximum size, after which they replace one another when worn or damaged.

Protein is like a long string of pearls, on which every pearl is an amino acid, a small part of the protein. Some of the amino acids our body can produce. Other, so-called essential amino acids, our body can not produce, so they need to be obtained from food. When you eat protein, it's like trying to carry a pearl necklace through a checkpoint with a lot of customs officers. Intestine is similar to customs officers - it does not miss large proteins. Cells lining the intestine contain a lot of smuggler's helpers: enzymes, acids and other substances that break the thread and cause the pearls to crumble one at a time. Separately, each pearl passes through the intestinal checkpoint into the bloodstream and is transferred to the destination, the liver, where all the pearls are reassembled into a larger protein necklace;different types of protein necklaces are then reintroduced into the blood and open sale as valuable structural components for each cell in the body.

Too much good

A widespread misconception about nutrition is the following. If a little of this food is useful to me, a lot will be better. Wrong! Our body needs a certain amount of each vital nutrient;too little - and the body will not be able to function properly;too much - and the body will have to derive excesses. This is especially true for proteins. A growing child needs 10-15% of the total calories consumed in the form of proteins: more during periods of rapid growth( infancy and adolescence), less in other periods. If you consume too much protein, the body will have to work overtime to get rid of excess proteins. The body of a growing child pays a metabolic price for surplus, spending energy on deducing them - a valuable energy that could be used for growth.

Protein Bank is empty

Another unique feature of this growth food is that, unlike other vital

important nutrients, the body can not store much protein. Proteins have a short shelf life, so there is no protein storage in the body, which he could call when protein starvation. To ensure that the protein shelf is not empty, it is required to make frequent trips to the shops - that is, frequent protein meals are required. Because the body as an upscale scam artist inventively patches holes, if the diet does not provide a constant supply of proteins, the body will wrest proteins from less important structures, for example from muscles, to use them elsewhere for more vital tissues. Remember the photos of depleted African children, whose muscles went on replenishing proteins that were not in their diet?

Protein March

Some proteins are better than others. Let's go back to our protein necklace, consisting of amino acids. Our body needs twenty-two amino acids;of which our body is capable of producing thirteen( we can call them home-made amino acids).The remaining nine, the so-called essential amino acids, we must extract in the grocery store or in the garden.(Children need ten essential amino acids because their body is not able to produce enough arginine for normal

growth.) Products containing all nine essential amino acids are called as a complete complex of proteins. Meat, fish, poultry, eggs and dairy products are the basis of the average American diet - the most common sources of complete protein complexes. While it seems that everything is easy and simple, but here's a trap. For all this fullness of proteins, we are forced to pay a dietary price: these products, containing complete protein complexes, can have an excess of harmful substances such as saturated fats. Animal proteins contain essential amino acids that best satisfy human needs, but they also contain more fats harmful to our body than we need. The answer is hidden in the garden. Vegetables, unpolished( whole) cereals, and especially legumes( for example, dry peas, soy, lentils and beans) are good sources of proteins. These products contain some, but not all, essential amino acids in different combinations. They are called an incomplete complex of proteins. Soy is the only product in this category that contains all the essential amino acids, so it is a complete protein complex.

Mix and combine

Let's return again to our protein necklace. We could have one long necklace, on which

pearls of all essential amino acids are strung - for example, meat, fish, eggs, poultry or dairy products. But the child may not like these foods, but an adult can get too much fat with them. The alternative is to eat two shorter necklaces, incomplete protein complexes, which must complement one another( on the second string there must necessarily be pearls that are not on the first).

Solution of the problem of obtaining all essential amino acids without unnecessary and dangerous substances is called by combining products - partial complexes of proteins are supplemented by mixing vegetables, cereals and dairy products or meat.(This approach is often also called supplementing proteins.) Legumes combined with cereals and cereals in combination with dairy products, for example, provide a complete set of essential amino acids. Here are some of the combinations most popular with young children:

• cereals and milk( cereals and dairy products);

• sandwich with cheese( whole grains and dairy products);

• sandwich with peanut butter( whole grains and legumes);

• macaroni products from wheat flour with bran cheese( whole grains and dairy products);

• bean or lentil soup with wheat or rice

crackers with bran( legumes and whole grains);

• granola or muesli with yoghurt( cereals and dairy products);

• beans with rice( legumes and cereals);

• rice pudding( cereals and dairy products);

• broccoli in cheese sauce( vegetables and dairy products);

• pasta with meat sauce( cereals and meat).

Note that we focus on vegetable and cereal sources of proteins than on more fatty animal proteins.

The best sources of proteins

To feed a picky consumer who probably eats no more than two or three tablespoons at a time, choose the most nutritious protein foods - those that have a lot of nutrients for a small amount of food. The richest sources of proteins indicated in descending order in accordance with their common nutritional value are the following products:

1. Seafood: cod, haddock, tuna, halibut, salmon, swordfish, etc.

2. Eggs.

3. Dairy products: cottage cheese, yoghurt, cheese, milk.

4. Legumes: soy, tofu, dry peas, chick peas( or peas), dry beans, lentils.

5. Meat and poultry: turkey( the best addition to the vegetable protein).

6. Nuts and seeds: sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, cashew nuts( pounded or in the form of pasta - nuts and seeds can not be given to children up to three years as a whole).

7. Cereals: wheat, rye, oats, rice, corn, barley, millet.

8. Vegetables: potatoes, green beans and green peas, broccoli, carrots.