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Raise kids the natural way
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Parents get bowled over by baby food and nutrient supplements promising good health for their precious kids. LEELA MENON blasts the myths behind packaged health food for kids.
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WHEN IT comes to the health of their children, parents disregard natural wisdom to give natural products to their kids and become vulnerable to advertisements and campaigns. All those campaigns of baby-friendly hospitals, breast feeding weeks, seem to fall on deaf ears, going by recent reports from doctors. If it was baby food earlier, the latest is protein.According to the Indian Academy of Paediatricians (IAP), child specialists in various hospitals in Kochi are deluged with enquiries from parents about the efficacy of tinned or packaged protein for infants, sold off the shelf.
"We always advise parents to give natural products to children. It is criminal to prescribe protein mixtures or other tinned stuff to perfectly healthy babies, because it is mostly egg protein. There are 18 amino acids in egg, apart from carbohydrates and proteins", said head of the IAP, Dr. Varghese Cherian, when contacted. Kerala is acclaimed for its low infant mortality, which is 13 per thousand live births, almost on par with developed nations. This is a clear testimony to the eager awareness of parents as well as the involvement of paediatricians in promoting child health.
The State was declared as the most child-friendly State because of the promotion of breast-feeding, spearheaded by the IAP in Kerala. The paediatricians had to work really hard to wean mothers off the habit of feeding children with baby food instead of mother's milk, which is vital to the physical and emotional development of the child. Mothers were reluctant to breast-feed because they were scared that it would affect the beauty of their figures and their belief that tinned baby food is superior in nutrition. Now mothers have realised the wisdom of the campaign... much to the dismay of baby-food manufacturers.
The current craze for nutrient supplements is another reflection of the parents' obsessive focus on the growth of their children and their willingness to risk anything for it, including least affordable money.
This trend to buy unaffordable tinned and bottled nutrients for their children erases income-distinctions in Kerala, consumed by the consumerist-frenzy.
Dr. Abraham Paul confirmed the nutritious superiority of egg to protein powders.
The following chart, worked out by the IAP, compares the content of both protein powder available in the market and egg.
Per five grams/ Egg (one in number.)
1. Protein 4.00 gms /6 gms.
2. Carbohydrates.0.25 gm/ 6 gms.
3.Fat 0.15 gms/6 gms.
Aminoacid content
Isolucine 0.20 gms./ 0.28 gms
Leucine 0.34 gm/ 0.28 gms
Lysine 0.272 gm /0.33 gm
Methionine 0.112 gm/ 0.17 gm
Phenylanine & Tyrosine 0.38 gms/ 0.29 gms
Threonine 0.16 gm /0.22 gm
Tryptophan 0.05 gm/ 0.06 gm
Valine 0.22 gms/ 0.31 gms
Histidine 0.108 gms/ 0.108 gms
Alanine nil /0.28 gms
Arginine nil /0.26 gms
Aspartic acid nil/ 0.5 gms
Cystine nil /0.126 gms
Glutamic acid nil/ 0.648 gms
Glycine nil/ 0.165 gms
Proline nil /0.209 gms
Serine nil /0.349 gms
Tyrosine nil/ 0.20 gms. It is the cost that is indeed stupefying. The cost of five grams of protein powder is approximately Rs.15 while the cost of one egg is just Rs.1.50. An average sized egg weighs approximately 57 gms, (about two ounces). The shell of the egg constitutes 11 per cent, the white 58 per cent and the yolk 31 per cent, regardless of the size of the egg. Paediatricians are unanimous in their recommendation that eggs are a precious source of protein. "In fact egg protein is used as the standard against which the quality of other food proteins is measured. One egg contains about six to seven grams of protein. Protein is an inevitable essential for people of all ages and eggs contribute this in adequate proportions for building and repairing body tissues", Dr. Paul said.
Paediatricians always insist that children consume egg as the fat in the yolk is so finely emulsified that it is digested easily. The ratio of unsaturated fats is about two to one. "This is considered very desirable. Oleic acid is the main unsaturated fat and it has no adverse effect in blood cholesterol. Eggs also contain Vitamin A, the B vitamins such as thiamine, riboflavin and niacin and Vitamin D, which are essential for growth of children. Eggs also have an abundant supply of minerals, such as iron and phosphorus that aid building and maintaining strong healthy bodies. At the same time eggs are low in calcium which is in the shell and contain little or no Vitamin C," Dr. Abraham Paul clarified.
This is precisely why eggs are so attractive to weight-watchers. It provides a well-balanced diet sans calorie increase. Egg has just 80 calories.
It is this precious nutritious egg that is discarded by anxious parents in favour of packaged protein powder which claims to contain 80 gms of protein, five gms of carbohydrates, three gms of fat content, 0.7 gms of calcium and .01 gms of iron. It is to prove the fallacy of this claim that the comparative chart has been worked out by the IAP.
Kerala is proving yet again that it is vulnerable to the white man's campaign... as in the case of the currently ongoing soap promotion through washing hands. How naïve can people be, despite education!
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