Three misunderstandings of supplementing iron with complementary food for baby

Normally, when a baby is 6 months old, it will be a bit confusing after eating milk. It will start to have an interest in the food on the table, and it will start to flow, and the push tongue reaction will gradually disappear. All these actually indicate that you can try to add complementary food to your baby.

Most parents, at the beginning of adding complementary foods to their babies, are worried that their choice of supplementary foods will not meet their nutritional needs. In fact, for most babies, what is the first food supplement is not the most important, it is important that this complementary food can strengthen the iron and will not cause allergies. Usually pediatricians will recommend iron-fortified rice flour as the baby's first supplementary food.

Iron is an essential micronutrient for the human body and is involved in important physiological processes such as hemoglobin and DNA synthesis and energy metabolism. Infants and young children do not receive and store enough iron from their mothers during the fetus period, and supplementation with supplemental foods does not provide enough iron. It is prone to iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia. Lack of characteristic anemia impairs the immune function of infants and young children, affecting physical development, intelligent development, and great harm to the health of infants and young children.

Strengthening iron is so important that the following three major mistakes must be avoided in the process of adding food:

Misconception 1: Drinking milk and eating dairy products easily lead to iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia

This misunderstanding involves a general knowledge of nutrition: When there are nutritional problems, don't simply blame for a certain food, but look for the cause from the diet structure.

Milk is rich in calcium, iron content is indeed very small, so formula milk will be based on the milk to supplement and adjust some nutrients. If you take in milk and dairy products while eating other iron-rich foods, such as animal liver, animal blood, poultry meat, etc., will not lead to iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia. If the intake of foods containing iron is severely deficient when milk and dairy products are ingested, the risk of iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia will increase. But this is obviously not the fault of milk and dairy products.

Myth 2: Spinach and red dates are the food of choice for iron supplementation

To evaluate whether a certain food is a good food supplementing a certain nutrient, not only to consider the content of certain nutrients in the food, but also to consider the absorption rate of a nutrient in the food. Iron exists in food in the form of non-heme iron (trivalent iron) and heme (divalent iron), usually trivalent iron, and divalent iron exists only in animal liver, animal whole blood, and livestock. Meat and other foods. Divalent iron is not affected by other dietary factors and has a high absorption rate of about 20%. Trivalent iron is susceptible to other dietary factors (such as phytic acid, oxalic acid in cereals, and polyphenols in tea coffee). Absorption rate was low, ranging from 1% to 5%. The iron in green leafy vegetables belongs to ferric iron with low absorption rate. Therefore, green leafy vegetables such as spinach are not the best food for iron supplementation. Similarly, the absorption rate of iron in dried red dates is also low, and it cannot be used as the first choice food for iron supplementation.

Myth 3: The egg yolk is the best food supplement for iron

The iron content in egg yolk is about 7mg/100g, and the absorption rate of iron is low, so it cannot be used as the first choice supplementary food for iron supplementation. However, egg yolk is rich in various nutrients, and raw materials are easily available. For infants and young children, it is still a good and inexpensive high-quality complementary food. However, it should be noted that egg yolks can cause allergies. If egg yolk allergies are found, they can be postponed until 8 months or even 1 year old.

(The pediatrician is a pediatrician and well-known science author @ Shrimp Mummy)

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