DIET AFTER THE FIRST YEAR
Milk is the principal article of diet during the second year. It should be given with regularity at distinct intervals of four meals a day. It may be given from the nursing bottle, unless the child has acquired the bottle habit and refuses to eat anything else but the food from his bottle, in which case it should be given from a cup. Beginning with the sixth month, aside from his milk, be it breast milk or bottle milk, he is to be given orange juice once each day as well as the broth from spinach and other vegetables. This is necessary to give the child certain salts which are exceedingly essential to the bottle baby.
At the close of the year when he is taking whole milk he should be given arrowroot cracker, strained apple sauce, prune pulp, fig pulp, mashed ripe banana (mashed with a knife), a baked potato with sauce or gravy (avoiding condiments), and a coddled egg. Fruit juices may be added to the diet, such as grape, pineapple, peach, and pear juice. Later in the second year he may be given stale bread and butter, and for desserts he may have cup custard, slightly sweetened junket, and such fruit desserts as baked apple and baked pear.
We do not think it is necessary to give children much meat or meat juices. We appreciate that there is a diversity of opinion upon this subject, but we do not hesitate to say that in the families where meat is little used, the children seem to grow up in the normal manner with sound healthy bodies, sometimes having never tasted it. When meat is used, it should be well cooked to avoid contamination with such parasites as tapeworm and trichina; it should also be well chewed before swallowing, as many of the intestinal disturbances of the older children are due to the swallowing of unmasticated food such as half-chewed banana, chunks of meat, rinds of fruit, and the skins of baked potatoes.
Let the children's diet be simply planned, well cooked, thoroughly masticated, and above all things have regular meal hours, and no "piecing" between meals; and if the mother begins thus early with her little fellow, she will be rewarded some later day by hearing him say to some well-meaning neighbor, who has just given him a delicious cookie or a bit of candy: "Thank you, I will keep it until meal time." Children learn one of the greatest lessons of self control in following the teaching that nothing should pass the lips between meals but water or a fruit-ade. Children in the second year require four meals a day, one of which is usually only the bottle or a cup of milk. These meals are usually taken at six, ten, two, and six in the evening. Oftentimes this early six o'clock meal is just a bottle or cup of milk, as may also be the evening meal.