The importance of balanced nutrition for children

The essence of balanced nutrition in childhood is to build up "original capital" for a child's lifelong health, growth and development, and cognitive ability. Many nutritional gaps at this stage are irreversible, and it will be difficult to completely make up for the losses after the window period has passed.

Last week I met a mother at the children's nutrition clinic. She clutched a neatly printed meal pagoda chart. She even weighed the broccoli and chicken breasts for her child on a kitchen scale to the grams. As a result, her child hid when it was time to eat. She was half a head shorter than her peers at almost 4 years old and was always throwing tantrums. She felt aggrieved during the conversation, saying that she had read a lot of popular science and said that nutrition must be balanced by strictly proportioning it, but why was it that she couldn't keep it well?

In fact, there are two different directions in the industry for children's nutritional intervention, and there is no absolute right or wrong: One is the "intuitive eating" theory that is highly respected in Europe and the United States, which believes that children are naturally aware of their own nutritional needs, and parents can develop healthier eating habits as long as they provide a variety of ingredients without interfering with what and how much children eat; the other is the dietary pagoda ratio that we often see, which advocates fixing the intake ratio of macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fats) according to age groups to ensure that the basic nutrients needed for growth and development are not stretched. The problem with the former is that if the family has poor eating habits and everything is fried chicken, French fries, and sugary drinks, the children will definitely only eat foods that are high in oil and sugar, which is not balanced at all. The latter is easy to be like the mother just mentioned, who turns eating into a task, which in turn makes children resist food.

To tell you something interesting, I met a grandma at a community free clinic last month. She took out seven or eight imported supplements as soon as she sat down, saying that her grandson would be supplemented with DHA, calcium, iron, and zinc every day, so he would definitely not be lacking in nutrients. After asking, she found out that her grandson didn’t eat staple food and relied on flavored yogurt and biscuits to fill her stomach. To put it bluntly, many parents have the opposite idea. Supplements are to make up for dietary gaps. If your basic diet is a mess, it will be useless no matter how much supplements you take. Just like building a house, if you don’t provide enough cement and steel bars (what we call macronutrients, staple foods, meat, eggs, etc.), no matter how good you buy nail adhesives (micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, etc.), the house will still not be strong.

We now have internal consensus data that nutritional intake before the age of 7 accounts for more than 40% of metabolic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes in adulthood. Don’t think that being chubby in childhood is cute. I met a 10-year-old chubby kid a while ago, and it was found that his blood lipids were high and there was slight lipid deposition on the blood vessel walls. This damage cannot be completely eliminated by losing weight in the future.

Many parents only focus on whether nutrition is enough to grow taller. In fact, its impact on cognitive and behavioral development is the most easily ignored. There was a first-grade child whose teacher said he couldn't sit still in class and made many small movements. His parents almost took him to get checked for ADHD. However, after a nutrient test, it was found that he was deficient in iron and B vitamins. He adjusted his diet and added more red meat, whole grains and dark green vegetables. After only two months, the teacher reported that he could sit still for more than 20 minutes in class, and his accuracy in homework was much higher. Think about it, the functioning of the brain relies entirely on these micronutrients as "lubricant". Without them, it will definitely not be able to move.

Some old people also say, "We couldn't eat anything when we were young, and we didn't grow well." This is actually true, but times have changed. The average height of children today is about 5 centimeters higher than 30 years ago. The amount of daily activities and the density of information that the brain needs to process are also much higher than before. In the past, the requirement was to "eat enough", but now the requirement is to "eat right". The needs are inherently different.

I have been providing nutrition guidance for children for almost 6 years. To be honest, there is no universal balanced formula. You don’t have to hold a scale to force your children to eat enough grams of vegetables, and don’t let your children eat junk food all the time. If you really have no idea, just remember a stupid way: there should be at least 3 colors of ingredients on the table for each meal. If you can eat more than 20 different foods in a week, there will basically not be a big nutritional gap.

After all, the critical period for a baby’s body growth is only about ten years. It’s much easier to lay a solid foundation with more snacks now rather than looking for reinforcements later, right?