traditional bush baby fodder?

[Swallow]

If you are mashing up the food and not chewing it you are not imbuing it with Saliva. This is part of the process of digestion, so it skipping this step is not as good.

While we're thinking about how it was in the old days, let's not forget what the life expectancy was.

In the 18th century you were lucky to survive childhood. When I was born, infant mortality rates were more than three times what they are now.

There's a lot to be said for some of the old ways, but nutrition and medicine aren't included.

There seems to be an implication here that the Life expectancy was always low and had not gone down due to industrialisation and city living. What is/was the mortality rate in tribal peoples at various stages of history?

 

[Toddy]

Swallow's right about that....urbanisation caused enormous numbers of deaths with the prevalence of diseases like typhoid, cholera, polio, smallpox, diptheria, scarlet fever, etc., etc., but the concommitant industrialisation of both the urbs and farming techniques (try plouging using a wooden plough or an iron one for instance) still allowed population growth.
The greatest benefit to child survival was vaccination against once commonplace killers, and effective sanitation.
Relatively cheap food really helped too, right enough, since until the advent of the industrialisation of the transport network food supplies were not guaranteed if local crops failed.

In a period of just over a 100 years we now expect every child to live; previously the vast majority of babies born never saw their fifth birthdays.

M

 

[Paul_B]

Even in my Gran's generation families tended to have experienced child mortality. That was Liverpool in the 30s. Hard times indeed but diet never the cause. Things treated with antibiotics now did for them. There's kids living hard times now but NHS is a big safety net these days.

Child nutrition is simple IMHO. It's kind of get as close to nature as possible. By that I mean use good vegetables with as little processing as possible. Mashed or blended makes no difference. Salt can kill the young as they have lower needs than adults. Bread has a lot of hidden salt so avoid unless you bake it and control it. Cooking from scratch/raw ingredients is best IMHO. What we'll do when our kid goes to solid foods shortly. Banana and milk is a good old favorite in our family for weaning. Simple to mash and tastes nice.

I believe babies have a neutral palate so what you feed them is an influence on what they like later in life. Ruin their palate and they might not appreciate food as much.

 

[EssexMonk]

"I believe babies have a neutral palate" I in good English tradition was fed brussle sprouts, boiled cabbage, turnips, parsnips etc etc from a very early age! Sorry to this day I still HATE em

 

[EssexMonk]

I might add it is instinct for small children to stuff everything in their mouths, if it tastes good they eat it if bad they spit it out, So through a proses of natural selection over the years we have evolved as kids to dislike what is bad for us. Those that didnt--died.

 

[sandbender]

Breast is best.

My oldest sprog nears her third birthday and still gets a feed now and then.

A Braun hand blender was all we needed to reduce veg and fruit to a suitably pulpy mush at the beginning, we could probably have done the same with rocks or our teeth but it would have been quite a bit of work.

It probably doesn't help that the nearest place I can buy food is a six day market with local fruit, veg and meat. If I want to shop at Tesco's or something similar then that is a much longer journey, I think the situation would be reversed back in the UK.

 

[Bowlander]

My little un was brought up on the food we ate, just mashed up with a blender, if we were having spicy foods we'd get a pot of frozen shepherds pie out. His favourite fodder was venison stew with lots of swede. He had the odd jar for convenience.

He wouldn't take his milk draught so had to have a bottle. There's a lot of pressure put on new mums to breast feed which is good, but makes those that can't feel bad. It never did our lad any harm, he came out early and was small but is now at the top of the 95th centile for height/weight.

Have fun!

 

[Goatboy]

Breast feeding until the age of 6 is not unheard of even today ... but is not the "norm"...

Bitty Mummy, Bitty.