Foods and home making

What is the best food for a young baby ? In order to find out which is the better food for babies — a baby’s own mother’s milk or cow's milk — the babies of 79 families were observed. Some of these babies were fed on their mother’s milk and some on cow’s milk. At the end of eleven years, all the children who had been fed on their mothers’ milk were alive. More than half of the children who had been fed on cow’s milk were dead.1 It has been shown in many other cases that the chances for a baby to live and to be healthy are very much greater when the baby is fed on his mother’s milk rather than on cow’s milk. It is a great pity when a young baby cannot have his mother’s milk as his main food. Dr. Mary Swartz Rose, an authority on diet, says : “ One year of good feeding at the beginning of life is more important 1 See pages no and 132 of Feeding the Family, revised edition, by Mary Swartz Rose, the Macmillan Company. 498 Feeding the Baby 499 than ten after forty.” The best feeding at the beginning of life consists in giving a baby his mother’s milk along with a few other foods which will be described later. What is certified milk? pasteurized milk? Sometimes a baby cannot have his mother’s milk because of her poor health. The next best food is cow’s milk. Some dealers’ milk has the bottle or cap marked certified milk. If possible, certified milk should be used for feeding baby because it is clean milk. By clean milk is meant milk comparatively free from bacteria. (One of the reasons why a mother’s milk is better for baby than cow’s milk is that the former is free from bacteria and dirt.) In order to keep cow’s milk free from bacteria, the milk must be taken carefully from healthy cows, put into clean bottles, and cooled immediately. Such milk has a guarantee that it has been produced under the most sanitary conditions and is called certified milk. If certified milk cannot be used, buy bottled milk. If possible, investigate the dairy from which the milk comes. The barns and cows should be clean. The milkers should have clean hands and clean clothes. The milk should be put in scalded bottles. The caps of some milk bottles are labeled pasteurized. This means that the milk has been heated to about 1450 F. and kept at that temperature for 30 minutes. Heating milk in this way does not kill all the germs in milk but it destroys disease bacteria. After pasteurizing, the milk is quickly cooled. What is modified milk? Cow’s milk is not like human milk. When cow’s milk is fed to a baby, it needs to be changed so as to make it more easily digested. Cow’s milk changed so as to meet the needs of a baby is called modified milk. Some babies need to have cow’s milk changed in one way and some in another. A doctor who is familiar with the needs of a little baby is able to write a prescription or formula for modified milk. Milk is modified for many babies by adding to whole cow’s milk (1) sugar and (2) boiled water or cereal water. 500 Health and Child Care All utensils used in modifying milk should be clean, i.e., free from germs. Note to the Teacher: Modifying milk and scalding the utensils needed can be taught best by demonstration. Directions for these may be obtained from the board of health of your state or from the Manual of Infant Hygiene, State Board of Health, Madison, Wisconsin.