By leafy vegetables we mean lettuce, romaine, endive, cress, celery, cabbage, spinach, onions, string beans, asparagus, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, artichokes, beet greens, dandelions, turnip tops and the like.
Other foods which are rich in protective substances are fresh fruit, egg-yolks and glandular organs.
Nearly all of the common foods are deficient in some respect, but as the shortcomings of the various groups are different, we can arrange entirely satisfactory diets by combining foods which supplement each other’s deficiencies. This explains to us why the meat-potato-peas-beans-bread-and-pie type of meals fails to supply adequate nourishment. These foods belong in the same general group and are deficient in about the same kind of food factors, thus tending to duplicate, rather than supplement each other.
If such a fare is enriched by the addition of the protective foods, milk and leafy vegetables, we have a well rounded diet in which the deficiencies of one group of foods are supplied by the properties of the other groups. In fact, it is only by such a supplementing combination that an entirely satisfactory diet can be secured.
Dr. McCollum points out that the mother on a faulty diet cannot nurse her baby to his advantage. “The mammary gland,” he says, “picks up from the blood both of the chemically unidentified food essentials, fat-soluble A and water-soluble B, and passes these into the milk, but it is unable to produce either of these substances anew. When one or the other of these is absent from the mother’s diet it is not found in the milk. We have shown the possibility of producing milk, poor or lacking in each of these substances and therefore not capable of inducing growth.”[[12]]
Dr. W. E. Musgrave gives dramatic accounts of the effect upon nursing babies of faulty nutrition among mothers in the Philippines, as follows: “Infant mortality in Manila,” he writes, “is greater than it is in any other city from which we have records. The underdeveloped and undernourished condition of the great masses of the Filipino people is due to a number of causes, the principal one being insufficient quantity and injudicious variety of foodstuffs employed. The cause of the enormous influence of the faulty nutrition of the mothers upon infant mortality directly and indirectly is one of the most important subjects within the scope of any investigation of this character. The mortality in breast-fed children is higher than it is among children artificially fed. This condition so far as we know is peculiar to the Philippines. The logical, and we believe, the correct explanation of this is the deficiency in quality and quantity of the mother’s milk. There are not in history more pathetic examples of unavailing self-sacrifice than are daily seen in our large clinics of poor, half-starved, undernourished mothers attempting to supply from their breasts food enough for one or more children, when their own metabolisms are in a starved condition. When asked the direct question as to the supply of foodstuffs these mothers almost invariably state that they have plenty to eat and the pathetic part of the story is that they believe that they are stating facts. These abnormal premises are the result of a peculiar unexplainable psychology that is of very wide application in this country that the administration of food is more to satisfy hunger than to produce flesh and blood, and that the cheapest way in which hunger may be satisfied produces a satisfactory form of existence.”
It is generally agreed that the two big problems of babyhood are proper nutrition and the prevention of infection, but nutrition is perhaps the greater problem, since any form or degree of malnutrition lessens the baby’s powers to resist and to recover from infection. Whether breast-fed or bottle-fed, therefore, it is imperative that the baby be nourished in the complete sense of being given all of the food materials which are essential to normal growth, development and protection against disease.
If the baby is artificially fed on milk that has been heated, his diet needs to be augmented by such protectives as cod-liver oil and orange juice, since the protective properties of milk are impaired by heating. If he is breast-fed, the mother will be able to supply to her baby the requisite nourishment and protective substances only if she, herself, is adequately nourished and in good condition.
That is the point of this entire discussion: The nursing mother must be on a satisfactory diet or she cannot satisfactorily nurse her baby. And by satisfactorily nursing her baby we mean, to give him from the beginning, through her milk, the materials necessary to build well and firmly that temple, in the shape of his body, which he will occupy throughout life; a structure so securely built, from the foundation up through each stage, that it will be able to withstand the attacks of disease and weather the inevitable storm and stress of life.