MEDICAL 2oS Badly cooked food is tough, and covered with a hard layer on the surface, with the result that the digestive apparatus is heavily handicapped. Hours for Meals The three-meal-a-day rule should be adhered to strictly in the nursery. If a child has three good meals, at the hours of 8.30, i, and 5.30 respectively, he is amply fed, and his digestive organs get into regular habits, and have sufficient time for complete digestion of each meal. The old idea that children required food about every two hours is physiologically incorrect. Even the infant of a few months old can go three or four hours between meals, and children over two will be all the better for a four and a half hour's interval between one meal and the next. It too often happens that the children of the rich never know the zest of hunger. The best way to do away with appetite is to feed children too often. The first thing that mothers should realise is that it is not frequent feeding that will make a child strong. His digestive organs can deal with only a certain amount of food. His stomach simply becomes disordered if it is given a second meal before the first has had time to digest. A forthcoming Home Nursing article on digestion should be read by every mother who wishes to obtain a comprehensive grasp of the subject of dietetics in the nursery. Suitable Foods for the Nursery A child, as well as an adult, must have suitable proportions of proteids or flesh-forming foods, carbo-hydrates or heat-giving foods and fats which are also heat-producers. After two years a good deal of variety of food is possible. With regard to animal proteids, a child can begin to have scraped red meat, a little chopped chicken, or minced rabbit or fish. Animal proteid can also be given, in the shape of mutton, veal, or chicken broth. Animal food should only be given once a day, at the midday meal in the nursery, but there are vegetable proteids which are particularly suitable for children. Lentils, either stewed or as soup, or as lentil-flour porridge, can take the place of meat on certain days a week. Suet pudding, well boiled, provides proteid in a very digestible form, whilst oatmeal contains albumen, fat, and carbo-hydrates. Well-cooked vegetables and stewed fruit are necessary foods in the nursery, and fruit may be given in prune shape or well-boiled fig shape, if the prunes and figs are first stewed and rubbed through a fine sieve. Bread, buns, and cake are never to be given new ; and golden syrup, honey, and jelly are better than jam in the nursery. The ideal food in the nursery is milk, which should form the staple article of diet for all young children. Next in importance eggs might be placed, and eggs and milk can be combined in many delightful puddings. Breakfast Porridge, if it is well made, should regularly appear at the breakfast menu. Although crdinary oatmeal can be used, the following is a recipe for an ideal porridge for children : Buy two pounds each of wheatmeal, barley- meal, and oatmeal. Mix them together and keep in a covered receptacle. Put a clean saucepan filled with cold water on the fire, and add a dessertspoonful of salt. Whilst the water is coming to the boil stir with a wooden spoon in the right hand, and with the left gently sprinkle the meal into the water until it is of a suitable thickness. After the porridge has come to the boil, let it boil for at least forty minutes, stirring it occasionally. In some households it is not possible to give so long a time in the morning to making the porridge, in which case the best plan is to buy a double saucepan. Water is placed in the lower pan, and the water to which the meal is to be added in the upper pan. The porridge can thus be made the night before, and allowed to simmer until the fire goes out, as it cannot possibly burn in a double saucepan, and it only requires to be thoroughly heated and brought to the boil next morning. If this porridge is served with equal parts of milk and cream it makes an excellent breakfast with the addition of bread-and-butter and a cup of cocoa. In order that children may not get tired of porridge they should have it three or four times a week, and on alternate mornings they can have eggs or fish, whilst the older children occasionally can have ham or bacon. Bacon fat is excellent for children, and it can be served for the younger children with bread. Toasted bread is good, because it provides variety and encourages chewing, and children should always be made to eat crusts, as they require mastication, which helps to preserve the teeth. Dinner For dinner, finely minced meat, chicken, or rabbit may be served with mashed potato and vegetables, such as cauliflower. Young children should not have meat every day. A little boiled egg, with bread-and-butter and a little stewed fruit and cornflour, makes an excellent vegetarian dinner occasionally for a child of two. three, or four years. The potato should be floury, dry, and well cooked. Roast apple, banana stewed in milk, stewed prunes, with skin and stone re- moved, are all excellent sweets. Fresh straw- berries, if they are good, are delightful in season. Milk puddings, such as ground rice, sago, tapioca, arrowroot, or cornflour, are occasionally extremely useful. Many children get tired of milk puddings because they are served too often and are badly cooked. A later article in the Home Nursing Section will give some instruction on these matters, which should prove useful to those- mothers who take an interest in children's food- Lentils may be given in the form of pudding,, and fish should appear at least once a week: instead of meat on the nursery table. Tea The third meal of the day really ought to be": tea and supper combined. The habit of giving a. child a biscuit and milk after it has got into bed about an hour after its last meal is bad. Plenty of bread, well buttered, with syrup, honey, or- jelly, should form the chief item of the nursery- tea, and a little variety may be given by a,' moderate allowance of simple cake or scones,, which should be at least twenty-four hours old.. If a child finishes a good tea about five o'clock: and goes to bed between six and seven he- requires nothing until his breakfast next morning,, at 8.30. If mothers realised how much harm they dO' by allowing children to have biscuits and milk at all sorts of hours they would never dream of continuing the custom. To be continued.
