Artificial feeding: with love and without risk
Imagine that you are taking the course "Perfect feeding of a child".After completing it for grading, the professor asks you to develop the ideal baby food. And here you are conducting an experiment, studying thousands of babies from birth and further, which you feed a wide variety of nutrient combinations to determine which children grow better. Those that grow best receive the best food, and their food will be your recipe for the ideal baby food. In the middle of your experiment you will find: the recipe has long been coined. The ideal food is human milk! For many centuries, this ancient recipe for survival has successfully provided children with optimal development.
The same is the case with manufacturers of artificial baby food, when they are trying - with varying degrees of success - to create an artificial copy of human milk. This recipe is the best
starting point. Human milk contains all the necessary ingredients - proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and water, which are in the right balance.
It is these ingredients that are combined in compounds called infant formulas. Having understood the nutritional value of different formulas, you can, together with your pediatrician, make the right choice for your child.
No artificial product will ever be considered a completely satisfactory replacement for mother's milk, although it is fair to say that the children's formula manufacturers have developed a relatively safe and effective alternative for children. Modern mixtures, no doubt, are better and safer than before. But that's what bothers us in children's mixtures:
• Feeding with artificial mixtures is a relatively new practice. Only in the last fifty years many children began to be fed with artificial mixtures, whereas breast milk was given to babies for thousands of years, so perhaps we should continue to consider artificial feeding as an experimental one.
• What about the effects of artificial feeding for children in the long-term future? Do adults who were fed in infancy with artificial mixtures with high salt content, low cholesterol, static calories, an excess of slags without immune value, and long-term side effects suffer? The answer is not known. Again, experiment.
• Do children develop artificial mixtures fully? It seems that children who receive artificial mixtures gain weight normally, but the question is not only whether they grow well, but how fully. Full development is one step ahead of growth;it means the growth and development of the child until the full disclosure of its potential. This is a question that has not been answered and to which, perhaps, it is impossible to give an answer.
Interaction during bottle feeding.
• By scanning shelves with infant formulas in your supermarket, you will notice that their composition is similar, but each mixture is slightly different. If there is a "right" mixture, then all mixtures should be the same. Should not this conclude that under the current state of the market for children's artificial nutrition, we still do not have a perfect mixture? Again, we are experimenting.
• Artificial mixes are static. They do not change depending on the different and constantly changing needs of the child, his mood and the individual schedule of
development. The only thing that can be changed in a mixture is its volume. There is no fresh, custom-made mixture, as there will not be it, most likely, never.
• An artificial mixture is not live. There are no living white blood cells, immune and fighting factors with pathogenic microorganisms, as well as digestive enzymes( enzymes) that are found in breast milk. Artificial mixture provides growth of the body, but does not protect.
• The biological availability( or biological activity) of the nutrients contained in the artificial mixture is lower than in human milk, which is why they are mostly excreted as slags, overloading the baby's intestines.
Other concerns about artificial infant formulas refer to individual "recipes" - for example, to mixtures that do not contain lactose( discussed later in this article), or to mixtures that do not contain cholesterol. In short, one could say that what concerns us most of all in artificial mixtures is what is not yet known.
Before choosing a mixture for your child, consult your doctor. Until recently, parents in the choice of a mixture relied only on a children's doctor and nothing more. It was believed that the advertising of artificial infant formulas, aimed directly at the consumer, is a bad taste. This code of dietary ethics was recently broken when several companies producing mixes began to advertise their products directly to the general public. The American Pediatric Academy took a wise decision and condemned this practice, and we share this view. As you consult with your doctor about each medicine that gets into your baby's body, you should also consult with your doctor about choosing a mixture.
Begin feeding your baby from a cow-milk formula, unless your doctor gives you other advice. If your doctor offers you a choice of several mixtures, buy them in small quantities or ask the seller for samples of each, try them yourself and offer each mixture to your child to find out what is best for you and is accepted with great pleasure by your child.