The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to Health

It is hardly necessary for me to repeat, that in these general views of Dr. C., with a few exceptions, I entirely concur; indeed some of them have already been presented. But I have expressed my doubts of the soundness of his conclusion in regard to sugar. Used with food, in very small quantity, by persons whose stomachs are already in a good condition, both sugar and molasses, especially the former, appear to me not only harmless, but wholesome and useful.

On the subject of simplicity in children's food, I should be glad to enlarge. There is nothing more important in diet than simplicity, and yet I think there is nothing more rare. To suit the fashion, everything must be mixed and varied. I have no objection to variety at different meals, both for children and adults; indeed I am disposed to recommend it, as will be seen hereafter. But I am utterly opposed to any considerable variety at the same meal; and above all, in a single dish. The simpler a dish can be, the better.

But let us look, for a moment, at the dishes of food which are often presented, even at what are called plain tables.

Meats cannot be eaten—so many persons think—without being covered with mustard, or pepper, or gravy—or soaked in vinegar; and not a few regard them as insipid, unless several of these are combined. Few people think a piece of plain boiled or broiled muscle (lean flesh) with nothing on it but a little salt, is fit to be eaten. Everything, it is thought, must be rendered more stimulating, or acrid; or must be swimming in gravy, or melted fat or butter.

Bread, though proverbially the staff of life, can scarcely be eaten in its simple state. It must be buttered, or honied, or toasted, or soaked in milk, or dipped in gravy. Puddings must have cherries or fruits of some sort, or spices in them, and must be sweetened largely. Or perhaps—more ridiculous still—they must have suet in them. And after all this is done, who can eat them without the addition of sauce, or butter, or molasses, or cream? Potatoes, boiled, steamed or roasted, delightful as they are to an unperverted appetite, are yet thought by many people hardly palatable till they are mashed, and buttered or gravied; or perhaps soaked in vinegar. In short, the plainest and simplest article for the table is deemed nearly unfit for the stomach, till it has been buttered, and peppered, and spiced, and perhaps pearlashed. Even bread and milk must be filled with berries or fruits. Where can you find many adults who would relish a meal which should consist entirely of plain bread, without any addition; of plain potatoes, without anything on them except a little salt; of a plain rice pudding, and nothing with it; or of plain baked or boiled apples or pears? And could such persons be found, how many of them would bring up their children to live on such plain dishes?

It need not be wondered at, that a palate which has been so long tickled by variety, and by so many stimulating mixtures of food, should come to regard cold water for drink as insipid; and should feel dissatisfied with it, and desirous of boiling some narcotic or poisonous herb in it, or brewing it with something which will impart to it more or less of alcohol. The wonder is, not that some of our epicures become drunkards, but that all of them do not.

Dr. Cadogan alludes to a sad mistake everywhere made about light food; and condemns, very justly, hard-boiled custards, pastry, &c. It is very strange that these substances—for these are among the injurious articles which I call mixtures—should ever have obtained currency in the world, to the exclusion of bread, which, as the same writer justly says, is among the lightest articles of food which are known.

It is strange, in particular, what views people have about bread. Judging from what I see, I am compelled to believe that there are few who regard it in any other light than as a kind of necessary evil. They appear to eat it, not because they are fond of it, by itself, but because they must eat it; or rather, because it is a fashionable article; and not to make believe they eat it, at the least, would be unfashionable. They will get rid of it, however, when they can. And when they must eat it, they soak it, or cover it with butter or milk, or something else which will render it tolerable—or toast it. And use it as they may, it must be hot from the oven. After it is once cold, very few will eat it. The idea, above all, of making a full meal of simple cold bread, twenty-four hours old, would be rejected by ninety-nine persons in a hundred; and by some with abhorrence.

People not only dislike bread, but regard it as unnutritious. I have heard many a fond parent say to the child who ate no meat, and seemed to depend almost wholly on bread—"Why, my dear child, you will starve if you eat no meat. Do at least put some butter on your bread or your potatoes." A thousand times have I been admonished, when eating my vegetable dinner during the hot and fatiguing days of summer—for I was bred to the farm, and ate little or no meat till I was fourteen years of age—to eat more butter, or cheese, or something that would give me strength; for I could not work, they said, without something more nourishing than bread and the other vegetables. And yet few if any boys of my age did more work, or performed it better, or with more ease, than myself. And I early observed the same thing in other vegetable eaters.

The truth is, there is nothing in the world better adapted to the daily wants of the human stomach than good bread; and few things more nutritious. There may be a little more nutriment in eggs or jelly; but if the former are hard-boiled, the stomach cannot digest them; and fat meat of any kind is digested with great difficulty. Indeed it is doubtful whether stomachs in temperate climates digest fat at all. They may dissolve it, but that is not making good chyle of it. They may even reduce it to chyle; but chyle is not blood. Fat may slip through the system without much of it adhering; and I think it pretty evident that it usually does so.

The muscle—the lean part of animals—may be nearly as nutritious as good bread, and is more easily digested. But it is very far from being proved that, for the healthy, those things are always best which are most easily digested. Nobody will pretend that potatoes are better for us than bread; and yet the experiments of Dr. Beaumont seem to prove that boiled or roasted potatoes are much more quick and easy of digestion than bread of the first and best quality. Even over-boiled eggs and raw cabbage, bad as they are, are dissolved in the stomach, and appear to be digested as quick, if not quicker, than good wheat bread. But nobody in the world will pretend they form more wholesome food. Neither is meat—even lean meat—necessarily more wholesome, or better calculated to give strength than bread, simply be cause it is more quickly and easily digested. It would be nearer the truth to say, that those substances which digest slowest (provided they do not irritate) are best adapted to the wants of the human stomach.

The philosopher LOCKE—perhaps from his knowledge of medicine—gives some excellent directions on this subject. "Great care should be used," be says, that the child "eat bread plentifully, both alone and with everything else; and whatever he eats that is solid, make him chew it well." This writer, by the way, supposed that the teeth were made to be used in beating our food; and that we ought neither to swallow it without chewing, as is customary in our busy New England, nor to mash or soak it in order to save the labor of mastication—a practice almost equally universal. But let us hear his own words.

"As for his diet, it ought to be very plain and simple; and if I might advise, flesh should be forborne, at least till he is two or three years old. But of whatever advantage this may be to his future health and strength, I fear it will hardly be consented to by parents, misled by the custom of eating too much flesh themselves, who will be apt to think their children—as they do themselves—in danger to be starved; if they have not flesh at least twice a day. This I am sure, children would breed their teeth with much less danger, be freer from diseases while they were little, and lay the foundations of a healthy and strong constitution much surer, if they were not crammed so much as they are, by fond mothers and foolish servants, and were kept wholly from flesh the first three or four years of their lives."

Were Locke still living, I should like to interrogate him at this place. He first speaks of giving children no meat till they are two or three years old; and then afterwards extends the period to three or four. The question I would put is this: If the child is healthier without meat till he is three or four years old, why not till he is thirteen or fourteen; or even till thirty, or forty, or seventy? And is not Professor Stuart, of Andover—a meat eater himself, and an advocate for its moderate use by those who have already been trained to the use of it—is not the Professor, I say, more than half right when he asserts, as I have heard him, that it may be well to train all children, from the first, to the exclusive use of vegetable food?

I have a few more extracts from Locke, particularly on the subject of bread.

"I should think that a good piece of well made and well baked brown bread would be often the best breakfast for my young master. I am sure it is as wholesome, and will make him as strong a man, as greater delicacies; and if he be used to it, it will be as pleasant to him.

"If he, at any time, call for victuals between meals, use him to nothing but dry bread. If he be hungry more than wanton, bread will go down; and if he be not hungry, it is not fit that he should eat. By this you will obtain two good effects. First, that by custom he will come to be in love with bread; for, as I said, our palates and stomachs, too, are pleased with the things we are used to. Another good you will gain hereby is, that you will not teach him to eat more nor oftener than nature requires.

 

"I do not think that all people's appetites are alike; some have naturally stronger and some weaker stomachs. But this I think, that many are made gormands and gluttons by custom, that were not so by nature. And I see, in some countries, men as lusty and strong, that eat but two meals a day, as those that have set their stomachs, by a constant usage, to call on them for four or five.

"The Romans usually fasted till supper, the only set meal, even of those who ate more than once in a day; and those who used breakfasts, as some did at eight, same at ten, others at twelve of the clock, and some later, neither ate flesh nor had anything made ready for them.

"Augustus, when the greatest monarch on the earth, tells us he took a piece of dry bread in his chariot; and Seneca, in his 83d epistle, giving an account how be managed himself when he was old, and his age permitted indulgence, says that he used to eat a piece of dry bread for his dinner, without the formality of sitting to it. Yet Seneca, as it is well known, was wealthy.

"The masters of the world were brought up with this spare diet, and the young gentlemen of Rome felt no want of strength or spirit because they ate but once a day. Or if it happened by chance that any one could not fast so long as till supper, their only set meal, he took nothing but a bit of dry bread, or at most a few raisins or some such slight thing with it, to stay his stomach. And more than one set meal a day was thought so monstrous that it was a reproach, as low as Caesar's time, to make an entertainment, or sit down to a table, till towards sunset. Therefore I judge it most convenient that my young master should have nothing but bread for breakfast. I impute a great part of our diseases in England to our eating too much flesh, and too little bread. Dry bread, though the best nourishment, has the least temptation."

I shall not undertake to defend all the sentiments of Mr. Locke in these extracts; but in regard to the main point—the nutritive properties and wholesome tendency of bread, and the importance of making it a principal article of diet for children—I think his views are just. In short, they do not differ, substantially, from those of a large proportion of the best writers on this subject in every country, during the last three hundred years. As if with one voice, they dissuade from the use of too much animal food for the young, and encourage the use of a larger proportion of vegetable food—bread, plain puddings, rice, potatoes, turnips, beets, apples, pears, &c., and milk.

Yet they all, or nearly all, seem to write just as if they did not expect to be believed; or if believed, to be followed. They seem to regard mankind as so inveterately attached to old habits, and so much addicted to flesh eating, that there is little hope of reclaiming them.

Now, though my opinions are no more entitled to respect than many of theirs, I hope for greater success than they appear to do. I expect that many young mothers who read this work, will be led to think and inquire further on the subject; and if they find that the views here advanced are in accordance with reason, and common sense, and higher authority, I am not without hope that they will reform, and do what they can to reform their neighbors.

I have dwelt the longer, in this section, on the general principles of diet, because I am of opinion that whatever is true, on this subject, in regard to the diet of children, soon after weaning, is equally, or nearly equally applicable to the whole of childhood, youth, manhood and age. It is not true that one period of life, and one mode of employment, demands a diet essentially different from that which is demanded at another period, and in other circumstances; provided always, that the individual is in health. Occasional instances of the kind, there may be; but they are not numerous.

The digestive powers of the young are more nearly as strong as those of the adult than is usually admitted, and they are much more active. They require a less quantity of food, undoubtedly; and they should be fed at shorter intervals. But as a general rule, what is best for them, as regards its quality, at three years old, is best for them at thirty; or, should they live so long, at ninety. I repeat it; there is very little difference in the nature of the food required ever after teething.

Let me not be understood as saying that the strong, and the robust, and the active cannot digest food which the weak, and enervated, and indolent cannot. Undoubtedly they can. But this does not prove that they ought to do it. It does not prove that their strength and vigor were not given them for other purposes than to be expended on the poorer substances for food, when they might have better. Nor is it true, as often pretended, that the hard laborer needs either more food, or that which is of a stronger quality, just in proportion to the severity of his labor. The man or the child who labors moderately, just sufficient for the purposes of health, and labors with his hands in the open air, needs rather more food than the indolent or the sedentary, or those who labor to excess; but not that which is of a stronger quality. It is he who labors to excess—if any difference of quality were required at all—who should eat milder food, as well as less in quantity.

Some physicians there are who tell us that all mankind would live longer, as well as be more healthful, if they ate nothing but bread, and drank nothing but water. It may be so, but I do not believe it. Water, as I shall show hereafter, is indeed the only appropriate drink; but I do not believe that bread, even after the second year, is in all cases and circumstances the best food. Besides that the experiments of Majendie and other physiologists go a little way—though not far, I confess—to prove that animals generally, (and if so, why not man, as well as the rest?) thrive best with some degree of variety in their food, it seems to me more in accordance with the general intentions of the Creator, so far as we can discover what they are.

While, therefore, I deny that either milk or bread is better, in all cases, for human sustenance, than any other articles of food, I must, at the same time, be permitted to regard them as among the best, and as deserving more general attention. Every infant, after leaving the breast, should, as it seems to me, make bread, in some of its forms, a chief article of food.

This article, so justly and emphatically called the staff of life, may be found in almost every country. Common sense seems to have dictated the propriety of its use; though fashion has often led us to overlook or despise it—like air, and fire, and water, and nearly every other common but indispensable blessing.

The best kind of bread is made from wheat, the worst from bark, saw-dust, &c. Wood and bark afford so little nutriment, that it is only in such countries as Norway, Sweden, Lapland. Iceland, Greenland, and Siberia, that the inhabitants can be induced to make use of them. Here they are often useful; either because people cannot get food which is better, or to blend with their fat or oily animal food. For it should never be forgotten, that healthy digestion requires a large proportion of innutritious matter along with the pure nutriment. In order to make bread from wheat, the meal should not be bolted. If it seems to contain particles which are too coarse, it may be well to pass it through a coarse family sieve; but the best bread I have ever eaten, as well as the cleanest and neatest, was not sifted at all.

I know there is an almost universal prejudice against this sort of bread. Some complain that it scratches their throats; others, that it is tasteless; and others still, that it does not agree with them. With others there is another objection—which is that bread of this sort has sometimes been called dyspepsia bread; and with others still, that it has been called Graham bread. Either of these appellations seems sufficient to condemn it.

Now as to the harshness, this is owing to its being made of bad materials, or to its being baked too hard, or kept too long. Much of what they call dyspepsia bread, in our cities, is evidently made by mixing the bran and flour of wheat after they have been once separated; besides which, in not a few cases, the finest of the flour appears to be taken away. Now bread made of such materials thus combined, will always be darker colored, as well as harsher, than when made from the wheat, simply ground without any bolting, and wet up in the usual manner. Such bread is best two or three days old. After four days, it becomes dry and somewhat harsh.

They who complain that such bread is insipid, are persons whose appetites have been injured by food which is high-seasoned; and who, if they eat bread at all, must eat it hot, or soaked in butter. No wonder such persons do not like plain bread, and say it is tasteless. But it must not be denied that bakers often suffer this kind of bread to be over-risen, in order to make it sufficiently light and porous. This renders it less tasteful, and from the saleratus they use, less wholesome.

No child who has been accustomed, from the first, to good wheaten bread, made of unbolted meal, and not less than one day old, will ever prefer any other, until he has been rendered capricious on this subject, and wishes to change for the sake of changing, or until he has been misled by surrounding example. I speak from observation when I say that infants, whose habits have not been depraved, will not prefer hot bread of any kind. "It is hot, mother," I have heard them say, as an apology for refusing a piece of bread; but never, "It is cold," or "It is too old."

It is the epicurean—it is he with whom it is a sufficient objection to any kind of food whatever, that he has used it for several successive meals or days—that is most ready to complain of good bread. He whose habits are correct, and who is the more unwilling to change any of his articles of diet, the longer he has been in the use of them, and who only changes them, or uses variety, from principle—he, I say, will never complain of harshness or want of taste in good wheat bread; nor will it be an objection of weight with him that Mr. Graham has recommended it, or that it has either prevented or cured dyspepsia.

Nor will the epicurean himself complain that bread is insipid, after being confined to it for a month or six weeks. He will then find a sweetness in it, for which he had long sought in vain in the more delicate and costly viands of a luxurious, and expensive, and unchristian modern table.

It is they only who observe simplicity, and confine themselves to very plain food, who truly enjoy pleasure in eating. The bulk of mankind benumb their sense of taste by their high-seasoned, over-stimulating food and drink, and by such constant variety and strange mixtures; and thus, in their eager cry, "Who will show us any good?" they actually enjoy less than he who eats plain food, and is contented with it.

Bread of all kinds is greatly improved in whiteness and pleasantness by being wet with milk; though even when wet with nothing but water, there is a solid and rational sweetness to it, of which the despisers of bread, and devourers of much flesh and condiments never dreamed, and never will dream, till they reform their habits.

If children are furnished with good bread, on the plan of Mr. Locke, there is no doubt that they will relish it most keenly; that their attachment to it will strengthen, and that unless we give them other food occasionally, from principle, or seduce them by depraving their tastes, they will continue it through life. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," is a general rule, and has as few exceptions, when applied to the diet of a child, as when it is applied to his moral tastes and preferences.

With those parents who, though convinced of the justness of the views here advanced, have already trained their children in the way they should not go, but are anxious to retrace their steps as far as possible, there will here be a difficulty. "Our children," they will say, "do not, at present, relish the kind of bread you speak of; and how shall we bring them to do so? or is the thing indeed possible?"

The answer to these inquiries is easy. Such parents have only to confine their children to the kinds of food which they deem proper for them, a few weeks or a few months, and they will soon relish them. If those who are old enough to be convinced can be brought to unite heartily in the change, and to endeavor to be pleased with it, the work of reformation will be more pleasant and probably more speedy. I have never found any difficulty of bringing myself to relish in a very short time an article of food for which I had no relish before, and to which I had even a dislike, provided I was thoroughly convinced it was best for me, and was earnest in the desire of change—except sweet oil, to which I was about six months in becoming reconciled.

It is with physical, as with moral habits, in their formation. We should fix on what we believe, from experience, observation, and divine and human testimony, is best for us, and habit will soon render it agreeable. It is important, even to health, that food should be agreeable; but as I have already said, what we know to be best for us will soon become agreeable, if we confine ourselves to it; and to our children also, if we confine them to it, in like manner.

Next to bread made of wheat—when that cannot be procured—is a mixture of wheat and Indian meal; but the proportion of the latter should be the smallest. Wheat, rye, and Indian, in the proportion of one third of each, make excellent bread, sometimes called third bread. Rye and Indian make a tolerable bread. Rye alone is not so good. The want, in the latter, of the vegetable principle called gluten, makes its general use of very questionable propriety.

Indian meal alone, baked in cakes by the fire, if eaten only in small quantities, is a very nutritious and by no means unwholesome bread. But its sweetness, and the general fondness which people who are accustomed to its use have for it, lead them to eat it in too large proportions, if they use it while it is warm. In these circumstances, it proves itself too active for the stomach and bowels. If warm, six ounces is as much as a hearty adult ought to eat of it at once; and children should of course take much less. It is less active on the bowels, and scarcely less agreeable, as soon as we become accustomed to it, if eaten when it is cold—even if baked in loaves, in the oven.

Potatoes, added to unbolted wheat flour, make excellent bread; and so, as I am informed, does rice. Of the latter, however, I have never eaten. Oats and barley, and many other grains and substances, will make bread; but it is of an inferior kind.

The question may again recur, after this extended series of remarks, whether I intend to confine the young almost exclusively to bread, in one or another of its forms. We shall see how this is, presently.

While bread, therefore, should constitute a part, at least, and sometimes the whole of a meal, a great variety of other articles are not only admissible, but desirable. Among these may be mentioned plain puddings.

One of the most wholesome puddings is made of Indian meal, enclosed in a bag and boiled. Nearly allied to this is the common hasty pudding; but the last is less wholesome, because it requires less chewing; and it ought to have been observed, before now, that after weaning, any food is digested better which has undergone the process of thorough mastication.

Boiled rice, though hardly to be regarded as a pudding, is very nutritious, and very easy of digestion. I am not without doubts, however, in regard to the utility of a large proportion of rice, as food. A dinner of it, two or three times a week, I believe to be wholesome; but used too frequently, it seems to me not active enough for the stomach and bowels; having in this respect precisely a contrary effect to that of warm Indian cakes. The common notion that rice has a tendency to make people blind, is entirely unfounded. Its worst effect is when eaten without being boiled through. In such cases, I have known it to do mischief; perhaps because it was swallowed without much chewing. Some grind it, and use the flour; but I cannot recommend it to be used in this manner.

The best pudding in the world is a loaf of bread, (What!—you will say—bread again?) three or four or five days old, boiled, or rather steamed, in milk. All kinds of bread are excellent for this purpose, but wheat and Indian are the best. They are excellent even without milk—that is, simply steamed.

Puddings made of the flour of wheat, rye, buckwheat, &c., are less wholesome than those which have been already mentioned. And all sorts of puddings are less wholesome, when eaten as hot as our unreasonable fashions require, than when their temperature is quite below that of our bodies. I would not have them so cold as to chill us, for this would be to go to the other, though less dangerous extreme; but they ought to be cool. Too much heat is an unnatural stimulus, likely to leave more or less debility behind it. In addition to this, those who eat hot food are more exposed to take cold, in consequence of it.

With none of these puddings ought we to mix any fruits, green or dried—not even raisins. Some of the more important properties of nearly every kind of fruit or berry are lost by boiling, unless we eat the water in which they are boiled, and save the vapor which would otherwise escape. I am not in favor of boiled fruit generally, especially if boiled in puddings.

Puddings, like most other kinds of food—even bread—may be slightly salted: not that this is indispensable, but because the balance of human testimony is in its favor. The argument that we evidently need salt because the other animals require it, is without much weight. The other animals do not generally require or use it.¹¹ The cases so often triumphantly mentioned, where animals appear to thrive better from the use of it, are only exceptions to the general rule, nor are they very numerous in comparison with the whole race of animals. Still I have no objections to its moderate use. It may be useful in preventing worms; though there are doubts even of that. In large quantities, it is unquestionably hurtful.

But neither fruits nor berries—permit me to repeat the sentiment—no, nor any such thing as cinnamon or spices, nor even sugar or molasses in any considerable quantity, should go into the composition of any sort of pudding. If the puddings are not sweet enough without, it is better to add a little sugar or molasses on your plate. Nor should sauces, or cream, or butter, or suet be used in or upon them; though of all these substances, cream is least injurious. Nutmegs, grated cheese, &c., are unnecessary and hurtful. Cheese should never be eaten, in any way.

There is one thing, however, which may be eaten in moderate quantity with all sorts of puddings and with bread; I mean milk. I say eaten with, for it is better never to put these substances, nor indeed any other, into the milk. The bread, pudding, &c., should be eaten by itself, and the milk by itself, also. In this way we shall not be liable to cheat the teeth out of what is justly their due, and then make the deranged stomach and general system pay for it.

Potatoes are a good article of diet—to be used once a day—though they are not very nutritious. They are best either steamed or roasted in the ashes. They are also excellent when boiled. Turnips are also good. Onions are not so useful as is generally supposed, except for the purposes of medicine.

Beets; in small quantity, and carrots and asparagus, and above all, beans and peas—but not their pods—are tolerable food once a day, during most of the year, except it be the middle of the winter. But neither these, nor potatoes, nor any other vegetables, ought to be cooked in any way with fat, or fat meat, or butter; or be mashed after they are cooked, or eaten with oil or butter.