General principles or laws of physiological nutrition of children

The principle of physiological adequacy of nutrition is the maximum degree of compliance of a food product with the capabilities of biting, chewing, swallowing, digestion, absorption and metabolization that a child of a given age has. It is very important to rely on well-studied natural patterns of the emergence of certain fermentation capabilities, immunological tolerance or inclusion in plastic processes. The concept of "adequacy" should include the immunological, mechanical properties of the product, its osmotic and taste characteristics. In practice, one also encounters "pseudoadequacy" - the apparent good tolerance of a particular food product.

It is necessary to emphasize this because children have great adaptive plasticity and are able to quickly and effectively adapt to "tolerate" a variety of food products. It can also be said that such adaptive plasticity is used in age physiology itself. The swallowing movements of the fetus with the ingestion of amniotic fluid that occur in the middle stages of gestation are a new stage of adaptation of the gastrointestinal tract with all the enzymatic systems of parietal digestion to future enteral milk nutrition. The same very smooth system of re-adaptation measures is used by the family and the pediatrician, regulating the gradual accustoming of the child to thick food when introducing complementary foods. But it is often necessary to state that children tolerate relatively rough dietary "experiments" without rough clinical breakdowns. There are observations of a completely calm reaction of children of several days or weeks of life to supplementary feeding with simple milk formulas, including whole milk or kefir, or to the early introduction of complementary foods based on gluten-containing cereals. Children are forced to obey and trust adults. However, such adaptation always represents a "zigzag" on the path of normal development. Such phenomena can be presented as particular manifestations of the general phenomenon of "adaptative development".

Premature emergence or enhancement of a function due to forced adaptation, on the one hand, leads to a relative lag in other directions of growth and differentiation, creating heterochronies of development, and on the other hand, to the final incompleteness of the formation of the function that was induced prematurely. This is one of the general laws of the nature of development. Artificial feeding is aphysiological for a child, it inevitably generates significant biological characteristics and changes in the spectrum of morbidity in the subsequent life of older children, adolescents and adults. These include such as hyperlipidemia, hyperinsulinemia, obesity and obesity, early atherosclerosis, behavioral disorders and the ability to form relationships, reduced learning ability.

At present, there is no doubt that breastfeeding cannot be considered as an exclusively nutrient and energy supply. As an equivalent and continuation of the umbilical cord connection of the intrauterine period, breast milk carries the widest range of regulatory and information carriers - hormones, biologically active substances and stimulators of differentiation of individual systems and organs, factors of immunological regulation and tolerance. Of great importance in natural feeding is the unique system of psychological and social imprinting in the process of breastfeeding, as well as the specific mechanism of sucking effort and tension. At the same time, being only a component of the complex effect of breastfeeding, the phenomenon of nutrition through mother's milk in itself is the "gold standard" of dietetics. In the "lessons" of breastfeeding, many basic principles of developmental dietetics can be revealed.

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