Improve taste for sick children who refuse to eat

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1. Some notes to help improve taste when children are sick

For infants under 6 months of age who are breast-feeding, when the child is sick, parents can continue to breastfeed normally, and at the same time can increase the number of feedings to help provide water and nutrients for the baby to improve children's health. However, for babies with stuffy noses or too tired to eat, mothers should express milk to babies with spoons.
When starting to enter the period of weaning, mothers can give children more meals and eat little by little with nutritious foods to provide enough nutrients for children to have resistance to overcome diseases. And these nutrients concentrate all four food groups including meat, fish, eggs, milk, fat,... In addition, parents need to pay attention to ensuring food hygiene and processing to be able to provide meals. Safe food for children.
When the child is sick to help the child recover quickly and avoid the child refusing to eat which can cause malnutrition, parents need to give the child 2 extra meals a day and do it for a week. The amount of food each meal is less than when the child is healthy so that the child can get used to it gradually. When the child is sick, it is necessary to give the child a lot of water to drink, especially if the child has diarrhea, it is necessary to rehydrate the child to avoid dehydration. Soups, salted water or oresol solutions can help rehydrate children, but these cannot be considered foods that can provide adequate nutrients for children.
Parents need to have a diet plan for their children to help improve their children's eating status. When building a diet for children, parents should remember to combine a variety of foods including:
Nutrients that provide carbohydrates or carbohydrates include foods such as cereals, potatoes, tubers.. . helps provide energy and fiber needed for children. The group of nutrients that provide fat includes cooking oil, animal fat, butter, cheese... to help provide energy in the most concentrated form. Fat helps your baby's body have good skin, and helps absorb fat-soluble vitamins well, and develop brain cells and the nervous system. The group of nutrients providing protein includes meat, fish, eggs, shrimp, crab, eel and frog... to help build the body and synthesize antibodies to protect the body. The group of nutrients that provide vitamins and minerals includes foods rich in vitamins and minerals such as green vegetables, ripe fruits... these substances are intended to regulate the activities of the child's body, especially rich in anti-apple fiber. constipation in children.

2. Mistakes when taking care of sick children

2.1 Abuse of paracetamol

Antipyretics are quite common for fever and pain relief. However, parents do not arbitrarily use fever-reducing drugs for their children without a doctor's prescription or overuse drugs when treating children. Because this situation is very easy to cause paracetamol poisoning.

2.2 Parents arbitrarily steam their children's nose and throat at home

When seeing children showing signs of respiratory infection, many parents bought a nebulizer to perform at-home nebulization for their children. However, this is absolutely not recommended, because arbitrarily blowing the nose and throat for children can bring many harms. If the child has a sudden bronchospasm right at the time of nasopharyngeal inhalation, it can cause the child to stop breathing. Moreover, nasopharyngeal steam is quite expensive. Because after each use is not over, you still have to discard and have to use a new set when doing it another time.
Nebulizers should only be used in hospitals for severe cases of children. It is also not advisable to nebulize yourself at home because nebulizers are only used to treat asthma or severe bronchiolitis in children.

2.3 Forcing children to eat a lot to gain weight

After the child is sick, the child's body often feels tired, loses weight, and the sick child refuses to eat much. Parents try to force the child to eat a lot, but this will backfire. In order to improve the child's taste after being sick, parents need to train the child to get used to the food and always change the menu for the child to help provide enough nutrients for the child in the meal. In addition, parents should also help children and create an atmosphere of excitement when making meals.
When children have just recovered, children do not like to eat fish and meat, parents can choose foods that stimulate the taste like making egg porridge for babies. When children begin to get used to eating practice, at this time parents continue to give children lean pork, then can give them any food that when healthy, children have a lot of interest to eat them.
Especially parents need to pay attention to young children who have just fallen ill and need to prevent pneumonia, so it is necessary to have methods to prevent respiratory diseases with good nutrition, along with improving the living environment. indoors as well as around the house.

2.4 Parents should not cook one meal for the baby and feed the baby all day

Diseases related to the gastrointestinal tract, intestinal tract often occur and invade from the mouth. When children are at the age of weaning, they often have digestive disorders. Therefore, parents need to pay attention to the process of buying, storing, processing and preserving food. In the process of making food for children, it is advisable to minimize the contamination of food causing intestinal infections of children.
One of the biggest mistakes of children, parents make one meal and feed the child this meal all day. This is seen as a risk factor that causes food quality to change as well as not providing enough nutrients for child development and making children not really interested in eating.
Another thing that parents need to keep in mind is that at this age, babies need to add essential micronutrients: Zinc, selenium, chromium, Vitamins B1 and B6, Ginger, acerola fruit extract (vitamin C), . .. to improve taste, eat well, reach the correct height and weight, and exceed the standard, have a good immune system, enhance resistance to less sickness and less digestive problems.
To have more knowledge about child care by age group, parents can visit the website of Vinmec International General Hospital for more information.