What is Baby Supplements?
Baby supplements are meant to mean that a child is fed with mother's milk as well as the extra food provided to meet the nutritional needs of her physical growth and increase after 6 months of her baby's birth. Advanced supplements will be full of energy, protein, vitamins, minerals, and food fiber. Supplements are definitely clean and safe, soft and easily acceptable for children, extra spices, or salt will be left out.
Supplementary Meals Why and How?
When the child is six months old, his nutritional needs increase due to his physical growth and the full development of the brain. At this time only mother's milk is not able to fulfill the energy crisis. So, at this time, he had to give extra nutritious and potent food. Otherwise, the child may be affected by malnutrition. The amount of iron and junk stored in the body during the birth of the baby also ends in six months. Therefore, iron and zinc must be provided through diet. This time the children are reluctant to eat food if they are not accustomed to normal food. It is very important to feed these supplementary foods in the right way to fill the nutritional and energy needs after six months or to eat new food.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) supplementary diet guidelines, how many times a child should be fed to a child depends on the energy of the food and the quantity of food every child has.
The supplementary feeding guidelines for a healthy baby are as follows-
Every 2 to 3 months a day for 6-8 months old child
3 to 4 times a day for 9-11 months old and 12-23 months old child
As well as daily nutritional supplements can be given 1-2 times per day as per the needs of the child.
Read more - How do you know whether your child is ready to eat solid or extra food?
Here are some notable things:
It may take at least two weeks to get used to the new food, so be patient. Under no circumstances will it be forced to feed. This can be reversed by doing so. If there is any food allergy, then it is to be excluded. The items used to serve food should be thoroughly washed and cleaned. After preparing the food, it can not be kept in normal temperature for more than two hours, it will be kept in the fridge in two hours. Before feeding, wash your hands well.
Within six to nine months, the baby's tongue is made up of 'test-bats' (special type of muscle by which children can understand the taste of food without milk). So it is delicious to eat even a little, it must be taken care of. But it is not right to expect that the child will eat the whole meal only if the food is fun. The child should not be forced to feed. The needs and preferences of each child are different. If there is no food after two days, there is no reason to think that the child will never eat that food. After one week you can try to feed that meal again.
The child will usually have to sit with his parents and feed him, so he will be encouraged to eat. The child can not be compelled for any food. If the child is hungry, you will eat. Small children can not eat more than once. So they have to feed them a little over and over again. But keep in mind that there is no excessive water in the food. The child will take good care of different types of food and do not need boring.
There are usually deficiencies in home-made foods
Generally, in Bangladesh, supplementary foods such as milk, jaw, suji, sugar syrup, sago, barley, which are very low quality in terms of nutrition and calories. According to statistics, these common supplements made in the home are not enough to meet the nutritional needs of children in Bangladesh.
According to the survey of varied food index conducted by RAAT, it is found that there are not enough nutrients that are available in the diet of a large number of growing children, who are 6-23 months old, between 165,111 children. This study has shown that one in five children per year does not meet the desired needs of daily food.