The best cereals and other starches for children are rice, hominy, Indian meal, barley, oatmeal, cracked wheat or wheaten grits, farina, cornstarch, and sago.

When the cereal grains are used instead of flour, they should be soaked in cold water for five or six hours and then cooked for two or three hours in a double boiler. If fed to infants less than two years of age or to children with any gastro-intestinal disorder, they must be thoroughly strained. They should be salted and served with cream, but without much sugar. The steamed preparations of oats, wheat, etc., which are sold in market, may be boiled one hour, and otherwise treated as the grains.

Bread and crackers may be allowed to infants after the first year, but only with their meals. The bread should always be porous, well baked, and stale. It may be toasted, or given dry in milk, or moderately buttered. Zwieback and plain rusk are also good foods for young children.

Crackers are made in great variety for children who have passed the second year. They should not be too dry or hard. They may be eaten in milk or with beef juice, or separately, with meals only.

The best are those made of wheaten or Graham flour, oatmeal, or gluten. The latter are the least palatable.

A large variety of prepared cereal foods are sold and recommended especially for children's use. These foods have been converted by heat or malt to dextrin and glucose or maltose, but they often contain a deficiency of flesh formers, and should never be long relied upon for feeding young infants to the exclusion of more natural food. (See Prepared Farinaceous Foods, p. 149).