PROPRIETARY FOODS
A word as to the use of Proprietary Infant Foods: These prepared foods may be classified under four heads, as follows: (1) condensed milks; (2) malted foods, those consisting chiefly of carbohydrates in the form of maltose and dextrins; (3) those consisting almost entirely of starch, and (4) those composed partly of soluble and partly of insoluble carbohydrates.
(1) Condensed milk may be sweetened or unsweetened. These milks are never given undiluted, the directions calling for one part condensed milk to nine parts water, which gives a mixture containing 0.90% fat, 5.49% sugar, and 0.80% protein if “Eagle Brand” Condensed Milk is used.[82]
(2) Malted Foods: Mellin’s Food and malted milk are examples of this group. These foods contain the carbohydrates in soluble form and when added to milk make an acceptable addition, as they furnish the carbohydrates in the most digestible form. When fed alone, diluted only with water, they result in a mixture deficient in both fat and protein.
(3) Imperial Granum is an example of this group, and there are several others with similar compositions. These foods are very much like wheat flour which has been subjected to heat, changing to a small extent the starch to dextrose and dextrin.
(4) Nestlé’s Food, Eskay’s Albumenized Food, and Allenbury’s Food are examples of this group, each containing sugar and a percentage of starch. Upon dilution with water, the amount of fat in the mixture is just a trace.
Incomplete Foods as a Source of Danger.—The ease with which the majority of these foods are prepared and the way in which they agree with the baby constitute the chief danger of their use. If they are added to milk, with the exception of the condensed milk, they result in a modified milk containing the carbohydrates in a more or less digested form. But they are expensive, and give no better result as a rule than a carefully modified milk containing a cereal gruel.
The giving of foods like malted milk alone is dangerous because they are deficient in some of the most necessary constituents, and babies fed in this way, while growing fat, are apt to have soft or brittle bones and muscular tissue higher in fat and water than in protein, so that they do not grow and develop in a normal way, and when they are attacked by the diseases so prevalent in the early years of life, they succumb rapidly, because the resistance given by a properly modified food is lacking.
Condensed milks act in a like manner. That is, in the sweetened milks the carbohydrate content is far in excess of the needs, and the proteins and fats are deficient, so that while the baby fattens he does not receive the building foods commensurate with his body requirements.[83]
Many mothers adopt the use of these foods because they mean less work than in modifying the milk properly, but the nurse should point out the facts just mentioned, explaining that while these proprietary infant foods are undoubtedly valuable at times to fill a place when the milk formula has not proved satisfactory, the use of these foods as a regular custom is expensive, not only from a financial standpoint but from a standpoint of health, since their disadvantages far outweigh their advantages in the long run.