The serving plate for children under three should be kept warm during the mealtime. Special children’s plates are now procurable that have thermos qualities or that are kept warm by hot water.
Avoid any possibility of infection. For example: Do not return spoon or fork to child’s food, or give to child, after you have used it yourself, or another child has used it. Do not blow into child’s food; use some other means of cooling.
Cereals should be fresh cooked within twelve hours for children under two, and within twenty-four hours for older children. Baked potatoes and eggs should be fresh cooked for each meal. Vegetables, soups, and purées should be cooked within twenty-four hours.
Toast should be buttered when cold. If buttered hot, the fat surrounds the starch grains and makes their digestion difficult or impossible.
Cereal should be served without sugar or butter, which make digestion difficult and form a rich combination that spoils the appetite for simple, wholesome foods. Top milk may be added, and for children two years, chopped stewed fruit.
The digestive juices in the mouth have an important part in the digestion of starches, therefore every means should be used for the insalivation of starchy foods. Dry buttered toast or whole wheat cracker, for instance, eaten with cereal, necessitates longer chewing of the cereal. The saliva is alkaline, and its action upon starches is hindered by the presence of an acid; therefore acid fruits, such as apple sauce, should not be taken into the mouth at the same time as starchy foods, such as bread, crackers, or cookies. Bread and milk are more digestible when taken together, as the milk is thus divided into smaller curds. Milk from a glass should be slowly sipped, in small swallows; this is a very important habit to cultivate in small children.
The diet should be carefully selected and analyzed, carefully prepared and daintily served with the minimum portions to meet the child’s needs. With these conditions a child should be trained to eat what is set before him, without argument, having a second helping of the simple foods to the limit of his caloric needs. Do not permit a child to be finicky about his food. The tastes and food habits are formed in early childhood.
Cultivate a taste for vegetables by giving first in vegetable broths, and then gradually give a teaspoonful of the mashed vegetable.
If a wholesome food is refused on first offering at one meal, give that first at a subsequent meal and withhold more desired foods until this is taken. Keep dessert out of sight until other food is eaten. An occasional child is not able to digest some special food, as milk, eggs, strawberries, fish. Some children cannot digest plain milk but can take it in foods, as in broth, junket, custard, pudding.
Common faults and tendencies in the child to be guarded against are: