IOI4 The Cornell Reading-Courses 



The above dietaries may be greatly simplified, but should hardly be 

 made more complex. Such simplification has been fully explained in a 

 previous bulletin on Human Nutrition. During the early years of child- 

 hood, fried foods, pastries, hot breads, heavy puddings, strongly flavored 

 vegetables, much meat, candies, and the like should find scant place in the 

 diet. Tea and coffee or other stimulants should never be given to children. 



All through childhood, milk should be a mainstay in the dietary. The 

 complaint is often made by mothers that their children do not like milk 

 and will not take it. Inquiry generally shows that the cause for this has 

 been the use of quantities of very sweet or highly flavored foods. The 

 distaste is generally a fancied one. The cases in which a child has some 

 persistent disability to digest milk are very rare. If the child has been 

 permitted to become notional in his food habits and he will not eat raw 

 milk, some way should be found to include it in the dietary. This can 

 be done through the use of milk soups, weak cocoa, custards, cereals 

 cooked with milk, and simple puddings. All the milk needed by the child 

 may be concealed in this way. 



The child's sense of taste is very highly developed. It derives much 

 more flavor and " taste satisfaction " from such bland foods as milk and 

 cereals, and from simple bread and butter, than does the adult. The 

 healthy child does not need highly flavored, stimulating foods, for nature 

 has given it a keener relish for bland ones. If strongly flavored foods are 

 constantly given to the child its keen sense of taste becomes dulled and 

 the child soon loses its pleasure in simple fare. 



The question is constantly asked, is not the child's natural fondness 

 for " sweets " an indication of its need for candy or sugar? A certain 

 amount of sugar in the child's dietary is certainly a very desirable way of 

 supplying some of the child's energy. But this sugar may be supplied 

 best in the form of milk, in sweet fruits and vegetables, in fruit jellies, and 

 in well-sweetened simple puddings, with only occasional pieces of candy 

 as a dessert at the close of the meal. All the sugar a child needs can be 

 included with other foods at meal-time without the necessity of the too 

 common between-meal indulgences. If a child is allowed to eat candy, 

 cake; and quantities of sweet crackers between meals, the appetite con- 

 stantly accustomed to the stimulus of the sweet food becomes vitiated. 

 As a result, the meal-time becomes a farce. " Not hungry," is the com- 

 plaint. Muscles, nerves, blood, and bones, which need all the things 

 that only such foods as milk and eggs and cereals and fruit are able to 

 supply, become badly nourished and the child is not the rosy, wholesome, 

 sound-sleeping, rightly-developing mortal intended by nature. 



If a child is very active it is a simple matter to increase the sugar in 

 its dietary without giving candy between meals. Sugar may be allowed 



