Baby Cereal

Baby Cereal, a product of factory manufacture, intended for feeding small children. Baby cereal is ordinarily released onto the market in original packaging, to which is attached a description of the method of preparing food from the flour and dosage is indicated for both the flour itself and the food prepared from it in accordance with the age of the child. It would be difficult to list all the varieties of baby cereal released onto the market, as their number is too considerable. In Russia, products manufactured in the nearest countries to it have always been most popular, mainly from Germany. Besides them, Swiss and English products were used on a wide scale. Products of American origin, of which there are very many, almost never reached Russia. - Initially, the appearance of baby cereal was caused by the desire to give children's food properties that would make it similar to women's milk, and in any case to make it most accessible to the processes of digestion. However, very soon these desires receded into the background before those tendencies of a commercial character that began to penetrate the entire business of supplying the market with baby cereal. Very soon this product became an object of competition and unscrupulous advertising. In the production of baby cereal, several guiding directions can be noted. Thus, first of all we encounter baby cereal that represents a combination of several types of starch flour, not subjected to any special treatment or only slightly diastasized. Its advantage is fine processing and pleasant taste. There is a French preparation (cerealin), which is a mixture of flour from various cereals (with a predominance of oat). In it, among other things, the tissue of the grain husk is preserved (containing, as is known, a significant part of the plant's salts and vitamins). Further, there is on the market ragout flour (gasa-hout) - a mixture of potato and rice flour, sugar and vanilla, with the addition of salep root and cocoa powder. To this same category of baby cereal must be attributed phosphatin (Favier), which is a mixture of rice flour, tapioca (starch of tubers of a plant from the euphorbia family, cultivated in tropical countries), starch flour (potato), ararot (India, Brazil). To it is added cocoa powder and calcium phosphate. On the other hand, baby cereal containing the constituent parts of milk is found on the market. Here, first of all, Nestle flour must be named. This is a product of Swiss manufacture (Vevey), enjoying very great popularity. The basic material for the manufacture of this flour is milk ('alpine') and wheat flour. The flour is roasted and mixed with dried milk. As a result, a biscuit is obtained, which is ground into a powder containing much undiastasized (insoluble) carbohydrate (starch). Nestle flour is rich in carbohydrates and very high in calories and therefore first of all eliminates starvation (inanitio), i.e., that deviation in the process of feeding which in a large number of cases threatens the development of the child. Thanks to this circumstance, it has gained great popularity among mothers, which it has retained in some localities for more than 50 years. Nestle flour became the prototype for other types of baby cereal containing milk; to these must be attributed, for example, Tainhardt flour. In all types of baby cereal of these categories we find a very high starch content. Thus, in Nestle flour (old type) it contained up to 34%. However, when negative attitudes toward starch began to appear in doctors' views on digestive processes and tendencies to replace it in children's food with soluble forms of carbohydrates began to mature, these tendencies quickly found reflection in the technique of factory manufacture of preparations for infant feeding. The composition of already existing preparations (Nestle) underwent appropriate change, while in new ones soluble carbohydrates predominated over insoluble. A whole series of products of corresponding character was released. Among them, the greatest popularity was gained by the German Kufke flour, the English flour bearing the name 'Mellins-food' (Mellin's food) and also of English origin the preparation 'Allenberry-food' (Allenberry's food). The latter is released in three modifications, of which two (No. 1 and No. 2) are milk flours, i.e., prepared on dried milk, and according to the quantitative distribution of soluble and insoluble carbohydrates belong to the considered group of baby cereals (concerning modification No. 3 - below). In our country there were also several types of baby cereal, with its preparation proceeding along two paths: along the path of Nestle milk flour and along the path of Mellin's flour - a pure diastasized carbohydrate preparation. Before the war in Russia, Malta flour was produced, containing a significant amount of maltose. Its manufacture was resumed in 1926, but very recently it was discontinued. From Russian preparations of the post-war period there is Phito flour (manufactured by the Ukrainian Sanitary Bacteriological Institute), flour of the Leningrad medical supply trade industry and flour of the Nestle type (of Odessa manufacture). However, very recently a number of facts have forced doctors to change their view on the role of soluble carbohydrate, which in the digestive process becomes accessible to fermentation too quickly, and now it is considered necessary to introduce slowly decomposing and difficult to ferment polysaccharides into food. This current of medical thought also reflected on the direction of the food industry, which gave products containing a large amount of slowly decomposing carbohydrates (Rademan, Quaker oats, Allenberry No. 3, etc.). As already indicated, baby cereal is predominantly cereal flour, i.e., a product mainly containing flour subjected during its manufacture to one or another technical treatment. However, very recently tendencies have begun to manifest themselves directed at making this essentially one-sided food more nutritious. Thus, in the composition of baby cereal the modern doctrine of vitamins found reflection, and banana flour (Plantain oats) appeared, which contains banana flour, oat flour and cocoa. Further, phytin was introduced into Phito flour as a carrier of phosphorus; in Leningrad flour there is egg yolk, obviously as a carrier of lecithin (phosphoric acid and nitrogenous bases). Even irradiated baby flour (Nestle) is produced. Some characteristic of baby cereal from the side of its elementary nutritional content can be obtained from the table of composition of the most common types of baby cereal. Carbohydrates Types of baby cereal Protein Fat Soluble Insol. Main constituents 13.1 0.6 67.7 11.9 Dextrinized flour 7.8 0.3 75.6 6.9 Sweetened wheat and oat flour, sodium carbonate 9.9 7.5 42.7 34.7 Milk powder, sucrose, dextrin-maltose and starch 14.2 5.6 17.3 52.7 Tainhardt ..... 16.2 6.0 53.6 16.7 Dextrin, glucose and milk sugar Allenberry No. 1.. 10.7 16.79 66.6 Milk powder, lactose and dextrin-maltose » No. 2 . . 10.23 11.94 68.7 Milk powder, lactose and dextrin-maltose » No. 3 . . 10.23 1.5 25.1 60.0 Partially dextrinized flour Quaker oats 14.4 6.8 4.0 62.0 Leningrad flour . . 10.0 7.9-9.1 36.0 30.0 Flour, cow's milk, sugar, eggs 49.5 24.0 Flour, milk, sugar, phytin Banana flour . 11.07 6.3 70.65 - Wheat flour . 11.6 1.6 - 72.3 Tapioca, Ararot 0.7 0.2 ~ 84.4 Thanks to the fact that in baby cereal, besides its carbohydrates, there are sufficient amounts of protein and fat, it is a product that satisfies the requirements that are made of flour in general. In regard to the degree of absorption, baby cereal does not yield to ordinary flour, and thanks to its content of soluble carbohydrates sometimes surpasses it. Baby cereal usually has a good taste, pleasant odor. It dissolves well in water and in milk and does not give lumps when cooked. To this must be added that it is usually released onto the market in elegant packaging. All this makes baby cereal a very attractive product. Like any flour, baby cereal can find application in feeding healthy and sick (pathological) children. In all cases when it is necessary to give supplementary food and use flour, preparations of baby cereal can be used. One can vary it and use, for example, in cases of a tendency to constipation in the child, flour containing dextrin-maltose. In cases when at the beginning of the supplementary food period the child refuses any other food besides women's milk, baby cereal, thanks to its pleasant taste and odor, can help eliminate this difficulty in feeding. Baby cereal, along with any other carbohydrate food (and with simple flour) finds application in various forms of dystrophy as an element playing an essential role in water exchange, and also, representing combustible material, protects protein and fat. In cases of acute disturbance of nutrition, baby cereal is a quite suitable food product on the basis of which a cautious, 'spare the intestine' diet can be built. For older children, baby cereal is a very suitable product for porridge.

Nevertheless, despite all the positive aspects of Baby Cereal, one cannot unconditionally consider its appearance on the market a favorable circumstance in the field of pediatric dietetics. As a market commodity, Baby Cereal has its typical external appearance. It is usually released onto the market in packaging on which extremely schematic and age-based instructions regarding the dosage of the cereal and the method of preparing food from it are provided. The mother also receives quasi-scientific, but in essence advertising, literature in which this product is extolled and examples are given confirming its favorable effect. All this creates in the mother the idea that Baby Cereal, in supplementary feeding, can completely replace her milk, and also gradually accustoms her to the thought that she can find in a book describing this product all instructions concerning feeding, and therefore can manage without consultation. It is impossible not to point out that the cost of Baby Cereal is always very high and does not correspond to its advantages. Since there is ordinary finely ground flour, the role of which in digestion differs in no way from what is achieved with Baby Cereal, the latter is an unnecessary product. It would be more correct to view it as a material suitable sometimes for therapeutic diet rather than as a product needed for feeding children. One could consider it indifferent if the external methods by which it penetrates the market did not make it undesirable or at least did not force its distribution to be placed in such conditions as would paralyze its negative influence. However, if one takes into account how strongly at the present time the influence that consultation, which bases its advice on identifying the individual needs of each particular child, exerts on broad circles of mothers, and furthermore takes into consideration that access to foreign products in the USSR is very difficult, then it must be admitted that the entire question of baby cereal currently represents only theoretical and even historical interest.

Я. SKopno.