The role of children's nutritional powder

Children's nutrition powder is a dietary supplement product. Its core function is only to fill the nutritional gap in children's daily diet. It cannot replace meals, and not all children need to eat it.

A while ago, I accompanied my best friend to take her 4-year-old son to child care. The child usually loves to eat butter bread and drink fruity milk tea. He would not touch a bite of vegetables or lean meat for dinner. It was found that the hemoglobin was only 102, which is a mild iron deficiency anemia. The child care doctor did not prescribe any random medicine, but asked her to buy a regular children's nutritional powder fortified with iron and vitamin C. She made a small cup of it with breakfast every day. After drinking it for less than three months, she went for a reexamination, and the indicators returned to the normal range. Don't tell me, for this kind of baby who really has dietary shortcomings, the role of nutritional powder is really direct.

However, not everyone recognizes the value of such products. A friend I know who does public nutrition research is a typical "opposition". She always said that as long as parents can understand the combination of three meals a day, and eat enough grains, potatoes, meat and eggs, vegetables and fruits, and milk beans, their children do not need to supplement any additional nutritional powder. On the contrary, many ordinary nutritional powders on the market add a lot of white sugar and food flavors in order to please the children's taste. The children are used to drinking sweet foods, but they are more resistant to tasteless meals, which is not worth the loss. She had encountered a case before. The parents gave their baby two cups of Internet-famous nutritional powder that was said to "grow taller" every day. The baby ate less than half a bowl of dinner, had not gained a pound in half a year, and had three back molars decayed.

To put it bluntly, nutritional powder is a commonly used "auxiliary tool" among doctors in clinical pediatrics. For example, my cousin's child has been severely allergic to milk protein since he was a child. He cannot touch eggs, nuts, or seafood, and he has to choose what to eat. When he was 2 years old, his growth curve was still stuck at the 3rd percentile, and he was properly short and thin. Later, the doctor ordered him to drink a special deeply hydrolyzed high-energy nutritional powder. The energy per 100 ml is nearly half that of ordinary formula milk. It also fortified the calcium, zinc and DHA he lacked. After drinking it for more than half a year, he is now three and a half years old, and his growth curve has reached the 28th percentile. All items in this year's kindergarten physical test have met the standards. If he just relied on the bland food he usually eats, I really don't know how long it would take to catch up to normal levels.

Different types of nutritional powders have very different effects, so don’t buy them randomly. Some are fortified with trace elements for ordinary picky eaters, mainly supplementing iron, zinc, and B vitamins that are most easily deficient in picky eaters. ； Some are high-energy and full-nutrition models, specially designed for low-weight babies and babies recovering from surgery. They can quickly replenish the energy gap that cannot be kept up with by daily diet. ； There are also special medical formulas for babies with food intolerance and metabolic diseases. These are medical foods and must be used strictly under the guidance of a doctor. Don’t believe the gimmicks promoted by the merchants about “beautifying the brain”, “growing 3 centimeters a month” and “enhancing resistance”. Most of these are just marketing rhetoric. If you really want to supplement, take your baby to do a comprehensive nutritional assessment first. What is missing will be useful.

To be honest, I have helped my friends choose children's nutritional powder several times. The most important thing to remind me is not to buy Sanwu products blindly. Either choose regular health foods with the blue hat logo, or choose products with the "Children's Formula for Special Medical Purposes" batch number, which are the ones that have been verified for safety. I read in the news before that a parent bought an "exclusive height-growing nutritional powder" sold by a micro-commerce company, which illegally added sex hormones. After drinking it for half a year, the baby grew ahead of schedule, and the epiphyseal line closed prematurely. In the end, he could not even reach normal height. It was really like picking up sesame seeds and losing watermelons.

In a word, the role of children's nutrition powder has always been to "check for gaps and fill gaps", and it can never replace a good meal. If your child eats well, is not picky about food, and has a stable growth curve within the normal range every year, there is really no need to spend this wasteful money. ； If you really have dietary deficiencies, food allergies, or slow growth problems, you should seek a doctor’s evaluation first, and then buy according to your needs. Don’t treat it as a scourge.