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For a healthy and active baby, it is important to include nutritious food in their diet. By when can you introduce fresh fruit juice to them? And why do you really need to? Let’s find out…
Conversely, in a country of abundant sunshine, rickets is practically unknown even when the diet is very deficient in this vitamin. While we are on the subject of vitamins, there is another important one about which I would like to refresh your memories. The bulk of the food we take is for fuel and for the repair of our tissues. The vitamins themselves apparently take no part in this process, but they ensure the healthy and harmonious working of all the parts. Like the lubricating oils for the engine, they are needed continuously, and a little at a time, so that they should be taken whenever food is taken and not in occasional doses.
This vitamin C, as it is called, is the one, the absence of which from the diet, cause “scurvy” which a century ago was a dreaded scourge, but which with the simple preventive measures now taken is comparatively rare.
1. When to introduce fresh fruit juice to your baby?
As babies near a year old they often seem to wish for a more varied diet than they have hitherto been accustomed to. Parents should introduce fruit juice to babies from 6 to 12 months of age.
2. Aspire to perfect health:
Yet amongst infants and toddlers in whose diets the importance of this vitamin has not been realized, and which has not been supplied regularly or in sufficient quantities there are many who show early signs of the disease.
There are very many people who go through life not actually contracting a disease, but who through faulty diet or wrong habits are on the borderline of that particular disease and not enjoying the perfect health that should be theirs.
The early signs of scurvy are restlessness, peevishness, poor appetite and slow gain in weight. The skin is pale and the baby shows signs of pain when being handled, the parts above the ankle and knees appearing particularly tender. If these early signs begin to show, the gums become swollen and reddened and bleed. There is often fever bleeding under the skin; the child “bruising” easily on being touched.
The prevention or cure of scurvy is very simple all that has to be done is to give fruit or vegetable juices daily, and in the curative treatment these of course have to be given in much large quantities.
Do you often ask yourself what’s the best juice to start baby on? Well! Then here is the answer..The foods which contain vitamin C are fresh fruits and vegetables, especially oranges, lemons, tomatoes, apples, pineapples, lettuce, swedes, peas, potatoes, spinach and cabbage. As this vitamin is not stored in the body, supplies of food containing it must be given daily.
3. Grow your vegetables:
Its virtue is destroyed by the heating, drying and ageing of the food. Thus young, fresh vegetables contain more than old stale ones. For this reason, parents both in city and country should whenever possible have their own small vegetable gardens so that the babies and toddlers can always be supplied with young vegetables and especially young green vegetables.
A mother who breastfeeds her baby must take a plentiful supply of fresh fruits and vegetables herself, so that she will give to her baby the supply of vitamin needed through her breast milk. She should try out unique and healthy vegetable juice recipes not just for herself but even for the baby/ toddler.
For an artificially fed baby, it is absolutely essential to see that the vitamin is supplied daily, and this is best given by fresh fruit or vegetable juices. Guava juice is rich in vitamin C, so it is first recommended, but if unprocurable the juice of oranges, carrots, swedes, tomatoes or the juice of other fresh fruits should be used.
A common mistake I find is that boiling water is sometimes poured over the fresh fruit juice, instead of it being diluted with boiled water, which has been cooled down till it is only just warm. In this way some of the vitamin content is destroyed.
Hoping you will all remember the importance of that little garden in your own backyards for ensuring of a plentiful supply of those foods which are rich in it, and which play such an important part in the health of your little family.
The post has been shared by StayHealthy blog. If you’re a first time parent, check out this amazing blog that also has essential guides for new parents.
