Baoma all know that fruits are nutritious, so it seems to be a good way to give children fruits, especially for children who do not like fruits.
Moreover, the weather is getting hotter and hotter, freshly squeezed juice has become a magic weapon for many people. Even babies who do not like fruit at ordinary times will not refuse sweet juice.
However, it is not so simple to give the baby fruit juice. If you eat it wrong, there will be many problems.
Don’t give juice to babies under one year old.
The baby does not have the ability to eat supplementary foods 6 months ago. If the baby is given fruit juice too early, it may lead to diarrhea or constipation.
For infants aged 6-12 months, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and Australian infant feeding recommendations also do not recommend regular drinking of fruit juice. After adding supplementary foods, in order to eat fruits, you can start with eating fruit puree, that is, scrape it off directly with supplementary food tools or even spoons for your baby to eat.
Don’t believe the rumors on the Internet that [babies aged 2-3 months should drink some fruit juice to supplement vitamins]. Breast milk is the best food for children of this age group and can meet almost all the nutritional needs of babies.
After the age of 1, must also limit
After the baby is 1 year old, it is not recommended to drink fruit juice.
However, if you want to drink, it is not completely forbidden. There is a premise: limited amount.
Recommendations from AAP:
- Children aged 1-3 years old: the amount of fruit juice to be drunk per day should be limited to 120 mL (about 8 points of ordinary paper cups). Children aged 4-6 years old: the amount of fruit juice to be drunk per day should not exceed 120-180 mL (no more than 1 cup). Children aged 7-18 years old: no more than 355 mL (about 1-2 cups)
In addition, there are three precautions:
- Don’t give your baby fruit juice before going to bed. Drinking sweet drinks before going to bed is easy to cause tooth decay. When the baby has diarrhea, don’t use fruit juice as a hydrant, which is likely to aggravate the symptoms. If the baby has constipation and is over 2 months old, pear juice and apple juice can be given appropriately to treat constipation. AAP suggests that the amount of fruit juice can be determined according to the age of the month. For example, a 3-month-old baby can drink 3 ounces (about 90 mL) of fruit juice every day to help relieve constipation. For a 4-month-old baby, it is 4 ounces (120 mL).
Drinking fruit juice ≠ eating fruit
Many parents don’t understand,
Didn’t you say that fruit juice concentrated the essence of fruit? Do I have to limit the amount of freshly squeezed juice I make for my children at home?
In fact, drinking fruit juice-even freshly squeezed fruit juice-is quite different from eating fruit.
1. Loss of nutrients
There are many healthy ingredients in fruits, but once they are made into fruit juice, only water-soluble nutrients can run into the fruit juice.
However, most dietary fiber and some minerals such as calcium and iron are insoluble in water and remain in the pomace.
Moreover, even if you use the original juicer of [Gao Da Shang], its much-publicized [slow squeezing juice] will inevitably destroy the cell structure, cause oxygen contact, and lose a lot of nutrients and antioxidants.
2. High sugar content, easy to make children infatuated with sweet taste
Juice does not necessarily concentrate all the nutrients in fruit, but it concentrates all the sugar and calories.
Most fruit juices contain more than 10% sugar, such as the most common apple juice and orange juice, which contain no less sugar than cola.
Worse still, if children drink fruit juice instead of water from an early age, they are likely to fall in love with sweet taste early on and only like sweet drinks when they grow up, laying hidden dangers of picky eating and obesity.
Step 3 Drink more
A cup of freshly squeezed orange juice requires almost 3 or 4 oranges to squeeze it out. The baby is almost half full after eating an orange, while drinking a cup of orange juice is almost not full, but he drinks the calories of 4 oranges.
In the long run, it is very easy to gain weight.
If you are worried that the baby is too young and it is not convenient to eat fruit, you can make the fruit into fruit puree or cut it into small pieces, which is much healthier than fruit juice.
There is a trick to drinking fruit juice.
We do not recommend fruit juice for children, and fruit juice is not as good as fresh fruit.
However, fruit juice is better than soda because it tastes sweet and has certain nutrition. It is better for children to drink occasionally than soda.
There are a few health tips that I would like to recommend to you:
Step 1 Try fruit and vegetable juice
Put more vegetables and less fruits to make the sweetness lighter. Remember to let the children drink together with the dregs.
A large amount of vegetables bring rich potassium and dietary fiber, while a small amount of fruits do not have too much polysaccharide and can enrich the taste.
Tip: Wash all vegetables and fruits before juicing, and remember to remove the core of the fruits. After squeezing, drink it as soon as possible. If you put it for a long time, it will not only easily breed bacteria, but also taste much worse.
Step 2: Drink juice with water
Juice with water? Isn’t this a waste of freshly squeezed juice?
No.
Although the taste of fruit juice will fade after being mixed with water, adults may feel that it is not good to drink, but for infants, such sweet taste is good enough and can also reduce children’s dependence on sweet taste.
It is suggested that Baoma add 1 ~ 2 times of water to dilute the baby’s juice.
3. Don’t Choose [Juice Drink]
There are still many [fruit juice drinks] on the market, with attractive fruits painted on the packaging, but a closer look at the ingredient list shows that the fruit juice content is only 10% ~ 20%, and the rest is almost all water and sugar.
This kind of drink can no longer be called [fruit juice] at all, so try not to buy it for children.
Summary
Before the baby is 6 months old, neither exclusively breast-fed baby nor milk powder baby needs to add any supplementary food including fruit juice and vegetable juice.
After the baby starts to eat supplementary foods, please help him form the habit of drinking plain boiled water, which will be a healthy habit that will benefit him for a lifetime.
In addition, parents should also cultivate their children’s habit of eating fresh fruits and vegetables early on. As for fruit juice, it can be added appropriately after the baby is 1 year old, but it is good to drink occasionally and in limited quantities.