ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Nourishing Our Children, Nurturing Their Future.

Updated on July 20, 2018

Nourishing Our Children, Nurturing Their Future.

What we feed our children since their early childhood, to a large extent determines their health and dietary habits for life. As a parent myself with two boys of my own, I know how hard it is to get them to eat the right foods.

It is important as a parent to spend time and effort optimizing our children's nutrition, as it will contribute and benefit them greatly in their future development. In today’s snack and fast food culture, children and adults are bombarded with advertisements for junk food (some targets children specifically), it is so much more difficult for our children to develop good eating habits.


Vitamin A Deficiency in Children

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and increases the risk of disease. Vitamin A deficiency is a public health problem in more than half of the countries in the world, especially in Africa and South-East Asia, hitting hardest young children and pregnant women in low-income countries.

Crucial for maternal and child survival, supplying adequate vitamin A in high-risk areas can significantly reduce mortality. Conversely, its absence causes a needlessly high risk of diseases.


What happens if your child is vitamin A deficient?

Vitamin A is essential for vision. It is also needed for building healthy cells in the gut and in the brain. For children, lack of vitamin A causes severe visual impairment and blindness, and significantly increases the risk of severe illness, and even death, from such common childhood infections as diarrhoeal disease and measles.


How to deal with vitamin A deficiency in children?

The best sources of vitamin A are breast milk, organ meats, milk fat, fish and cod liver oil, but none of which is prevalent in our modern diets. Supplementing vitamin A between 6 month and 6 years of age can reduce overall child mortality by a quarter in areas with significant VAD.


Vitamin D Deficiency in Children

Vitamin D is essential for normal growth and development. It helps the body absorb calcium,

Which is important for the development of strong bones.


What happens if your child is vitamin D deficient?

Children with vitamin D deficiency are at greater risk for stunted growth and weakened bones that are prone to fractures and osteoporosis later in life. As a matter of fact, severe and prolonged vitamin D deficiency is the cause of rickets, a bone-weakening disease we normally associate with in developing countries where poor nutrition is common.


How serious is vitamin D deficiency among children?

Vitamin D is contained in foods like eggs and some fish, and a lot of milk is fortified with vitamin D. Exposure to sunlight (about 10min a day) also forms vitamin D. The latest research shows that some teens may be at increased risk for vitamin D deficiency because they don’t get enough milk on a daily basis or enough sunlight in winter.

The problem was more prevalent in African-American teenagers and more common during the winter months. Children who live in northern latitudes with less intense winter sunlight are at higher risk of vitamin D deficiency, as are dark-skinned children whose pigmented skin doesn’t absorb sunlight as easily.

Children suffering from vitamin D deficiency often don’t have symptoms until it starts to cause problems. If the deficiency is detected early enough before bones stop growing, there’s enough time to prevent permanent damage.


How to deal with vitamin D deficiency in children?

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends multivitamin supplements containing 200 international units of vitamin D per day for babies who are breast-fed only and for at-risk children and adolescents. “At risk” means those who don’t drink at least 17 ounces daily of fortified milk or who don’t get regular sunlight exposure.

Most children who eat a well-balanced diet, drink milk and get a modest amount of sunlight from outdoor activity will not have a problem with vitamin D deficiency. This is really another wake-up call for children and teens with couch-potato lifestyle. The high-risk individuals here are the sedentary children who stay indoors and on their phones or computers consistently or watch a lot of TV and thrive on junk food.


Calcium Deficiency in Children

Calcium is important for strong bones. Approximately 50% of the calcium in adult bones is laid down during adolescence, so this is a critical time period for calcium intake. Having a diet with foods that are high in calcium to meet daily requirements is necessary for the development of strong bones. It is also an important way to prevent the development of osteoporosis in adults.


How much calcium does your child need?

Toddlers (age 1-3 years) require about 500 mg of calcium each day (about 2 glasses of milk).

Preschool and younger school age children (age 4-8 years) require about 800 mg of calcium each day (about 3 glasses of milk).

Older school age children and teens (age 9-18 years) require about 1300 mg of calcium each day (about 4 glasses of milk). This higher level of calcium is especially important once they begin puberty when the skeleton increases its bone mass. If the skeleton is strengthened with enough calcium during these years, diseases like osteoporosis in the later years are thought to be less likely.


How to deal with calcium deficiency in children?

Good sources of calcium include dairy products such as milk, yogurt, cheese and buttermilk. Green leafy vegetables like broccoli, collards, bok, choy, Chinese cabbage and spinach also provide calcium, although only five per cent of this may be absorbed. Soy and tofu is rich in calcium but their bland taste might keep your children away. If your children have difficult eating enough foods rich in calcium, you might consider a calcium supplement.


Zinc Deficiency in Children

Zinc is one of the most important trace elements needed by your cells. It helps your immune system, aids in protein synthesis, cell reproduction and wound healing, and plays a major role in fertility and conception, among others.


How does zinc deficiency affect your child’s health?

It has recently become apparent that milder zinc deficiency contributes to a number of health problems, especially common in children who live in developing countries. The lack of a sensitive indicator of mild zinc deficiency hinders the scientific study of its health implications. However, controlled trails of moderate zinc supplementation have demonstrated that mild zinc deficiency contributes to impaired physical and neuropsychological development and increased susceptibility to life-threatening infections in young children.

Zinc deficiency in children causes impaired growth and impaired taste. Other symptoms and signs in children include delayed sexual maturation and hypogonadism. However, because many of the symptoms and signs are nonspecific, clinical diagnosis of mild zinc deficiency is difficult. Zinc deficiency should be suspected in undernourished children even without typical symptoms or signs.

What are good sources of zinc?

A wide variety of foods contain zinc. Oysters contain more zinc per serving than any other food, red meat and poultry also provide sufficient zinc. Other good food sources include beans, nuts, certain types of seafood (such as crab and lobster), whole grains, fortified breakfast cereal, and dairy products.

Phytates, which are present in whole-grain breads, cereals, legumes, and other foods helps to bind zinc and inhibit its absorption. Thus, the bio-availability of zinc from grains and plant foods is lower than that from animal foods, although many grain and plant-based foods are still good sources of zinc.

Selenium Deficiency in Children

What is selenium?

Selenium is an essential trace mineral to human health. It is incorporated into proteins to make selenoproteins, the important antioxidant enzymes which help prevent cellular damage from free radicals, help regulate thyroid function and play a role in the immune system. Thus selenium deficiency will cause many health disorders.


How does selenium deficiency affect the health of children?

Selenium deficiency is relatively rare in healthy well-nourished individuals. It occurs commonly in patients with severely intestinal disorder, those undergoing total parenteral nutrition and people relying on food grown from selenium-deficient soil in some countries, most notably China. Besides, children are at particular risk for selenium deficiency, which has potentially serious medical implications. Growing children with selenium deficiency may develop chronic osteoarthropathy (Kashin-Beck disease). Selenium deficiency may also contribute to development of a form of heart disease (Keshan disease), hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease and cancer.


Nutritional Tips for Parents

Here are some nutritional tips for parents to follow aiming at rising up healthy and intelligent kids.


1. Don’t develop kid with a sweet tooth

The taste for sugar is acquired through eating sweeter and sweeter foods. It can also be lost, usually with some resistance, by gradually reducing the level of sweetness in food and drinks. This means replacing sweetened drinks with fruit juice diluted half and half with water. Few children drink enough water. You can encourage your child to drink water by putting it on the table at mealtimes, and when they are thirsty give them water for the first glass and diluted juice for the second. You can set an good example by drinking water in front of your kids. Do not give sweets, sweetened foods, cola and other sweetened drinks as treats. Make sure you always have enough fresh, appealing fruit for your children to nibble on at their discretion. Send them to school with fruit rather than money to buy sweets. When shopping restrain from buying junk food or sugary things, as if it’s not there you won’t think about it all the time. If sweets, sweetened drinks and foods are not part of their day-to-day diet they are unlikely to crave them or develop an addiction.


2. Develop good habit of eating vegetables

Develop habit of eating vegetables, including raw vegetables, with each meal. The trick here is to find ways of preparing vegetables so that they taste good. Too many vegetables are over cooked and taste bland. Raw organic carrots, peas, parsnip chips, and mashed or baked potatoes are naturally sweet and favorites with children. Serving something raw with each meal, even if it is just a few leaves of watercress, grated red cabbage, tomato or carrot, develops the taste for salad foods. What I also do with my kids is, I find ways to play games with them; for instance I let them cut their own vegetables and prepare their own salad.


3. Introduce oily fish and seeds to your kid’s meal

As long as your kid is eating oily fish three times a week and a daily portion of seeds, they should be getting a good level of essential fats to help their brains develop and boost IQ. I normally take some almonds or nuts with while doing out door activities, and give them to eat as snacks.


Adapt your kids with good eating habits from a young age, as prevention is better than cure.

© 2018 Mike Gao

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)