Children fed with it are plump, but have soft flesh; they are large, but not strong, and lack the power of endurance and resistance to disease. Their teeth come late, and they are very likely to have rickets.[62] This is enough to indicate that it is not a proper food upon which to feed a child exclusively.
Condensed milk is valuable in emergencies or in traveling, and may also be used occasionally when for any reason the milk supply fails. It has the advantage of being free from ferments and easily kept.
There are physicians who recommend the use of condensed milk, and no doubt, compared with the germ-laden, watery fluid called milk, obtainable in the poorer sections of large cities, it is infinitely better. It should always be diluted with at least ten times its bulk of water.
Preserved Milk
Preserved Milk. Preserved milk is milk which has been condensed and canned without the addition of sugar. It would be a valuable food for children were it not that it is expensive, and will keep but a few hours after the can is opened. By sterilizing it in flasks with narrow necks, plugged with cotton, it may be kept as other milk is for an indefinite time. As soon as the can is opened, the contents should be poured into a glass or earthen vessel, for, on exposure of the milk to the air, chemical action takes place with the tin.[63]
Farinaceous Foods
Farinaceous Foods. There are many farinaceous forms of food prepared for the use of infants and children. Probably the most valuable of them are those made according to the Liebig process. The starch of the grain from which such foods are prepared is, in the process of manufacture, changed into soluble dextrine, or sugar (glucose), by the action of the diastase of malt: the very thing which an infant cannot do.
When we consider that the digestion of starch in the alimentary canal consists of this change into glucose, and that it is effected principally by the saliva and the pancreatic juice, the significance of the value of such foods will be seen.
It is also well to bear in mind that neither of these functions (the secretion of saliva and pancreatic juice) is developed in an infant until it enters the third month of its life, and then but very imperfectly. That alone shows the necessity of excluding all starch from its food up to that age.
Mellin's food and malted milk are prepared according to the Liebig process. In them the starch has been converted into soluble matter by the action of the ferment of malt. It is really a partial predigestion. Mellin's food does not contain milk.