277. Important Facts About Infant Foods

The analyses quoted above reveal some facts that deserve careful consideration, which may be summarized in the following statements:

1. In some brands the proportions of nutrients are greatly unlike what are found in human milk, the protein and fat, and sometimes the,ash, being deficient, and the carbohydrates greatly in excess.

2. In most cases the carbohydrates are not present as lactose, but in part as sugar resulting from the hydrolysis of starch (probably glucose) and in part as untransformed starch.

3. In many of the foods, a large part of the solids is insoluble in water, this being true of both protein and carbohydrates.

278. Danger From Unmodified Starch

It is clear that the commercial infant foods are decidedly unlike the natural food of the young child, in one respect very undesirably so. Reference is made to the presence of starch. When the infant receives its natural food, there is no occasion for the exercise of the diastatic function in digestion (hydrolysis of starch to sugar), as sugar is the only carbohydrate in milk. It was formerly held that the very young infant is not able to digest starch at all, but recent investigations throw doubt on the accuracy of this conclusion. Even if starch is more or less acted upon by the young child, it is an unnatural demand in the earliest stage of development, and the presence in the digestive tract of so much insoluble material, not only starch but proteins, is likely to be attended with disorders of the stomach and intestines. This would be especially true of the heated season. German statistics, previously cited as to the use of cow's milk, show a still greater per cent of mortality among infants fed with these artificial preparations. In addition to the unnatural substitution of starch for the milk sugar that is in the child's natural food, there is also the deficiency in the proportions of ash and fat to be considered, a condition which may easily have a serious influence upon the child's nutrition and the character of its growth. Such a defiance of the natural methods is excusable only in cases of necessity.

279. Standard For Infant Foods

The following standard for infant foods quoted by Wiley from the British Food Journal is worthy of attention:

Definition: Infant's food is food described or sold as an article of food especially suitable for infants of twelve (12) months of age or under.

Standard: Infant's food shall contain no woody fiber, no preservative substance, and no mineral substance insoluble in acid; and, unless described or sold specifically as food suitable only for infants over the age of six (6) months, shall, when prepared as directed by any accompanying label, contain no starch, and shall contain the essential constituents of, and conform approximately in proportional composition to, normal mother's milk.