Toddlers

Summary Article: Severe Nutritional Deficiencies in Toddlers Resulting From Health Food Milk Alternatives Health food beverages are not suitable for infants. Children who have passed infancy are prone to nutritional disorders due to continued growth. Two case studies conducted on two children belonging to well educated, seemingly painstaking parents revealed that although the toddlers received medical care regularly, consumption of health food beverages led to severe nutritional deficiency. In the first case, a 22-month-old child who had been breastfed until the age of thirteen months was hospitalised with acute kwashiorkor. Due to perceived milk intolerance and chronic eczema history, after weaning, the parent started feeding him daily with 1. 5 litres of rice beverage, which is very low in protein content compared to caloric ingestion. Typical features of kwashiorkor were apparent in the child and kwashiorkor therapy was introduced, leading to a remarkable response to re-feeding and within three weeks, a complete oedema resolution and a rising serum albumin was observed. After one year, the child was thriving on a milk-based paediatric nutritional-supplemented regular diet. In the second case, rickets were detected in a 17-month-old male child who was mature during birth, was breastfed until the age of ten months and after weaning, the parent fed him with a calcium/vitamin D- deficient soy health food beverage. The patient had inadequate exposure to the sun owing to parental career demands. He had grown and developed usually up nine months when an examination revealed clinical features of rickets. Calcium supplements and ergocalciferol were administered and within six months, he had responded to therapy remarkably. Until the late 1920s when there was the introduction of commercially prepared vitamin D milk enrichment, in the US, nutritional rickets was a chief paediatric health plague. These nutritional diseases are completely avertable. An important component of health maintenance visits are dietary counselling and dietary history. The container of the health food beverages that these families used indicated that they were not meant to be used as infant formulas. Apparently, toddlers’ beverages without suitable minerals, protein quantities, and vitamin should indicate their unsuitability for them. Work Cited Carvalho, Norman F., Richard D. Kenney, Paul H. Carrington, and David E. Hall. Severe Nutritional Deficiencies in Toddlers Resulting From Health Food Milk Alternatives. Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 107. 4(2001): 46. Print.