Insufficient nutrition of rice flour harms children’s health.

Original title: Insufficient nutrition of rice noodles harms children’s health

Recently, the State Food and Drug Administration announced the information of the second phase of food safety supervision and sampling inspection in 2015. In the unqualified list of special dietary foods, 17 kinds of unqualified foods are all infant rice noodles, and the unqualified reasons are mainly sodium, calcium, vitamins and other nutrients. Then, as an important complementary food for infants and young children, what impact will it bring to the baby if its nutritional components are not up to standard?

Baby rice noodles focus on nutrition cards.

The reporter found from the information of the second food safety supervision and sampling inspection released by the State Food and Drug Administration in 2015 that the brands involved in the unqualified list of this special diet are Meiliyou, Disney, Baoduomei, Weixiang, Borhui, Bei Le Su, Bocheng Food, Dimixiong and Deqier.

Taking Shantou Kangyuan Food Co., Ltd. as an example, the sodium content of Meiliyou brand infant nutrition rice flour (shredded pork tomato) was 1.4mg/100kJ, far below the national standard of 24.0mg/100kJ; The content of vitamin A in the first stage of Disney brand formula nutritious rice flour with black rice and red dates produced by Shantou Peizhi Food Co., Ltd. is 6μgRE/100kJ, which is lower than the standard value of 14-43 μ GRE/100 kJ. The formula nutritional rice flour of Huai Shan Yi Mi Jin Zuan, a Bocheng food brand produced by Jiangxi Tianfang Industrial Co., Ltd., has a calcium content of 8mg/100kJ, which is lower than the national nutritional index of 12mg/100kJ.

Recently, the reporter visited the market and found that there are many brands and types of infant rice noodles on the market, and what they have in common is that they all marked their "nutrition" characteristics with eye-catching fonts. Take a brand of black rice and jujube rice noodles as an example. In addition to the same eye-catching word "nutrition" in front of the rice noodles, this rice noodle suitable for infants aged 6 to 36 months also emphasizes its own "scientific formula", scientific proportion of vitamins and minerals, and strengthens iron, zinc and calcium. Another brand of pea infant rice noodles also claimed on the packaging that it was "balanced nutrition and smooth digestion".

Nutrition is related to children’s health.

Then, what kind of consequences will it bring to children if the nutritional components of rice noodles are not up to standard?

Zhang Silai, former director of pediatrics at the Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine affiliated to Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, pointed out that children in infancy are growing and developing, and their stomachs are not large, and every meal is to meet the needs of growth. Moreover, the food that infants can eat is limited, especially for children who have just added complementary food. Baby rice noodles may be the only food for children except milk. If you eat rice flour with substandard nutrition for a long time, your child may suffer from malnutrition for a long time, which will bring irreparable regret to the growth of infants and young children. Take vitamin A as an example, its deficiency will not only damage the normal development of cornea, but also lead to diseases such as pneumonia and measles in infants.

With the frequent exposure of negative news about infant rice noodles in recent years, many parents dare not add rice noodles to their children, but instead add other complementary foods or simply delay the time for children to add complementary foods. In this regard, Zhang Silai pointed out that when the baby grows up to 6 months, the coordination of the digestive system and various organs has matured, and the enzymes for digesting starch in the intestine are gradually active. The addition of milk-transferring food helps the baby to complete the transition from relying on breast milk to using other foods for nutrition. Zhang Silai reminded that the baby’s first complementary food, the first choice is iron-containing rice flour, which is not easy to be allergic, but also can supplement iron. At the same time, it is necessary to cooperate with fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C to help iron absorption.

Rice flour cannot replace milk.

As a complementary food, infant rice flour is important, but its importance still cannot replace breast milk or formula milk. Some mothers think that since the baby can eat complementary food, it is the baby’s staple food, which usually reduces the amount of feeding to the baby.

Zhang Silai pointed out that rice flour is only a supplementary food, and the supplementary food for babies is also called weaning food. Its meaning does not only refer to the food used when babies are weaned, but also refers to the "transitional" food added during the period from single breast feeding to complete weaning. However, some nutrients in milk are not available in complementary food. Within one year old, the baby’s staple food should be breast milk or formula milk, and complementary food can only be used as a supplementary food.

According to reports, the main ingredients of rice flour are carbohydrates, followed by a small amount of protein, fat and B vitamins. What babies need most in the growth stage is protein. The protein contained in rice flour is not only of poor quality, but also of low content, which cannot meet the needs of babies’ growth and development. If only rice flour food is used instead of milk, protein’s deficiency will appear.

Jinghua Times reporter Xia Wen

(Source: Jinghua Times)