What’s Proper Nutrition All About?
The first thing to understand about childhood nutrition, and nutrition for anyone, is that simply eating food doesn’t count as proper nutrition, and it isn’t enough just to take in calories. Your child should be getting the right foods containing the correct vitamins, which will allow for appropriate brain development.
The right nutrition for your child starts, as you may have guessed, when that child is still developing in the womb. During these months and the infancy period after birth, your child should be getting enough iodine and iron, for instance, to allow for brain development.
Proper childhood nutrition is all about making sure you, as a pregnant mother, are eating the healthy foods your baby needs while developing and then feeding the child the right baby food after birth. Remember also, if you’re breastfeeding, your own diet still has a big impact on your child’s nutritional intake. If your own health needs aren’t being met, it will affect the quality of the milk you produce.
If a baby is deprived of proper nutrition before or after birth, their body could make fewer cells, which can impair normal development. If a slightly older child is deprived of the right nutrition, their cells might not grow to be as large or sophisticated as they should.
What Does Proper Nutrition Affect?
As parents, what do you have to worry about if your child doesn’t get the proper nutrition?
For one thing, children who are undernourished as infants can turn out generally smaller than their peers who received proper nutrition. Undernourished children also have a greater risk of struggling in school when they get older with school work.
