Children's Nutritional Scale

There is no "standard answer version" of children's nutrition scales that can be directly applied to all children. The various general scales that can be found on the Internet are only reference baselines at the public health level. The scale that is truly suitable for your child must be dynamically adjusted based on age, exercise intensity, allergic history, and eating habits. There is no need to compete with yourself on grams.

Do you also have several scales transferred from parenting accounts and maternal and infant groups in your mobile phone album? How many grams of eggs, how many milliliters of milk, and how many grams of green leafy vegetables should you eat every day? Even the grams of salt are clearly marked. If your child misses a bite of green vegetables, he will be anxious for a long time, fearing that the lack of nutrients will hinder his growth? Oh, by the way, most of the general scales we usually see are actually derived from the children's dietary pagoda in the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)". This is made by experts in the field of public health who have compiled the nutritional intake data of children with different physiques in different regions across the country. The general direction is absolutely reliable, such as collective meals in kindergartens and basic nutritional guidance for community child care, all based on this framework. If you have just become a parent and have no idea what to feed your baby, follow this general category and you will definitely not make a big mistake.

But if you use this as a KPI card, it is really easy to cause problems. I have been in the pediatric care department for almost 8 years, and the children I have met are really very different. For the same 4-year-old boy, there is a "little sports motor" who practices ice hockey four times a week, and there is a quiet child who is born with a small appetite and likes to sit and play Lego. If they all eat 100-150g of staple food a day according to the general scale, the former will definitely be so hungry that he will hug bread after school, and the latter may have a fever due to accumulated food. Babies with allergies are even more special. A while ago, a mother used a scale to ask, saying that her baby is allergic to cow's milk protein. How can she make up for the 350ml of milk per day? You can't drink it until you get a rash, right? At this time, you must change the milk quota to an equal amount of hypoallergenic formula milk or deeply hydrolyzed cheese. You can't just copy the table.

Oh, yes, there are also many parents who like to pick out the "food types" in the scale, such as requiring their children to eat broccoli and salmon every day. In fact, it is really unnecessary. Nutrition is calculated on a weekly basis, not on a daily basis. If you don’t eat dark green vegetables in the first three days of this week, eat more spinach, lettuce, or even half a kiwi in the next two days, and you can replenish the amount of vitamins. There used to be a mother who was very serious and used a kitchen scale to weigh her baby's food every day. As a result, her baby turned away when she saw the spoon. Later, I asked her to stop weighing her. Every meal only had staple food, protein, and vegetables, and the baby could eat as much as she wanted. Within half a month, the baby was begging for food, and she gained half a catty.

As for the taboo items in the scale, the guidelines in different regions also differ. For example, our country’s guidelines recommend not adding any salt or sugar under 1 year old. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that low-sodium seasonings can be added in small amounts after 1 year old. In fact, they are all intended to reduce There is no absolute right or wrong about children's preference for heavy flavors. If your family's taste is bland, it's okay to add it later. If your child really doesn't like bland food, it's not a big mistake to add a little less soy sauce for children. You don't have to quarrel with the elderly at home over this.

If you really want to make an exclusive nutritional scale for your baby, it is actually very simple. You don’t need to find any complicated templates. You can first record your baby’s normal diet for 3 consecutive days (that is, if you don’t deliberately feed more or less), and then compare it with the major categories of the dietary pagoda. As long as staple food, high-quality eggs The ratio of vegetables and fruits is about 3:2:2. If the baby's height and weight are within the 3%-97% range of the growth curve, there is no problem at all. Just adjust according to this amount in the future. If the baby exercises a lot recently, add more staple food and meat. If the baby has poor digestion recently, add more vegetables and grains. It is very flexible.

To put it bluntly, the children's nutrition scale is originally a tool for novice parents, not a KPI to assess the child's eating. What you are raising is a lively child, not a specimen in a laboratory. There is really no need to worry about missing a few grams of milk or a mouthful of food. If the child can eat and sleep, has normal bowel movements, and is growing up to standard, it is the best nutritional scale.