What is Dietary Balance? How Can a Balanced Diet be Provided to Children?

What is Dietary Balance? How Can a Balanced Diet be Provided to children?

Children require a well-balanced diet to ward off infections and diseases. A balanced diet encompasses a variety of nutrients essential for children's well-being and optimal growth. It equips them to fend off various health challenges. Here are some key principles for guiding a balanced diet:

What is a balanced diet? Food contains a spectrum of nutrients – carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and more. Children need these nutrients to maintain their health and achieve optimal growth. If the food children consume contains an appropriate amount of these nutrients essential for their development, it can be considered a balanced diet.

What kind of diet do children need? Children's dietary needs vary across different age stages. Their dietary provisions should evolve in tandem with their growth and nutritional requirements to ensure their healthy development. Since infants have small stomachs, starting with foods that provide ample energy and nutrition is sufficient in just a few spoonfuls. However, a balanced diet for children significantly differs from that of adults. While adults should focus on low-fat and high dietary fiber foods, infants require relatively higher levels of beneficial unsaturated fatty acids and lower dietary fiber. Although dietary fiber is beneficial, excessive consumption can lead to a feeling of fullness, potentially reducing the intake of other nutrients. However, preparing coarse grains into a porridge or gruel form for consumption makes it more easily digestible for infants.

The foremost aspect of children's dietary intake is ensuring both high-quality nutrition and sufficient quantity. Inadequate nutrition and energy in the diet can lead to imbalances and deficiencies in certain nutrients, which can hamper children's weight gain and growth. For instance, long-term vegetarian diets among children can lead to deficiencies in vitamins B12, riboflavin, calcium, iron, lysine, and methionine, impacting their health. A plant-based diet with inadequate protein intake can lead to stunted development. Vegetarian children who lack exposure to sunlight are also prone to vitamin D deficiency and consequently, rickets.

Research indicates that children who consume a high amount of sugary foods and relatively fewer high dietary fiber grain-based products exhibit elevated levels of delta-9 desaturase and oleic acid in their blood. Increased delta-9 desaturase activity is linked to the liver's conversion of sugar into saturated fatty acids, and saturated fats are harmful byproducts of fat metabolism. For children facing issues like obesity, malnutrition, anorexia, or selective eating, blood fatty acid composition can be tested as a reference indicator to assess food energy balance.