Contents:
- Medical Video: Growing Healthy Babies - Stanford Children's Health
- Milk allergy
- Egg allergy
- Peanut Allergy
- Soy allergy
- Flour allergy
- Fish allergy
Medical Video: Growing Healthy Babies - Stanford Children's Health
Finding out what food allergies your child has can stress you out. Your first reaction is to avoid the food from your child's diet. But when you do that, your child can lose a lot of important nutrients. A balanced diet that is rich in nutrients is very important for children's growth.
Your child's body needs nutrients to grow healthy and strong. You don't need to worry if you need to avoid certain foods in the short term. But usually over 2 weeks, you have to find a safe source of nutrition to replace the nutrients lost from your child's food. Here's how to balance the nutritious diet in some common food allergies:
Milk allergy
Milk is one of the most common food allergies in children. Milk provides a good source of various important nutrients for bone mineralization and growth. This nutrition is very important during the peak period of growth. These nutrients include: protein, calcium, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin B12, riboflavin and phosphorus.
But, to get enough calcium, children need to eat from various sources of non-milk foods that contain calcium. For example, one cup of green vegetables contains a lot of calcium as 4 ounces of milk. A child who needs 500 milligrams of calcium every day will need to eat 4 cups of green vegetables to meet the requirements. Will your child eat all these green vegetables? Maybe not, but it doesn't hurt to keep offering. An alternative is to look for calcium-fortified foods.
In some cases, you may need to provide supplements for children. If he is already at the age of being able to start consuming the milk tanoa formula, supplements may not be needed.
You might be able to use alternative milk as a substitute if your child is one year or older. You can replace it with soy milk, fortified rice milk, whole grains and bean milk (such as oat milk and almond milk). Be sure to read the label to make sure this substitute milk is enriched with additional nutrients.
Egg allergy
Children with egg allergies must avoid eggs in all forms, unless their allergist tells you otherwise. Egg white is part of the egg that causes an allergic reaction. But, it is impossible to separate white from yellow, because eggs without egg yolks still contain traces of egg white protein.
Eggs provide a quality source of protein as well as iron, biotin, folacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin, selenium, and vitamins A, D, E and B12. Your child can get sufficient amounts of protein apart from protein sources such as milk, meat, poultry, fish, beans and legumes. Make sure your child is not allergic to these substitutions. Meat can also provide selenium and vitamin B12. Folacin in nuts, fruits and green vegetables. If your child consumes a variety of other foods, a menu of egg-free eating will not occur in children.
Children who avoid foods that contain eggs can lose important nutrients from the diet. For example, baked goods use fortified flour, containing vitamin B and iron. A child who avoids baked goods needs to get extra calories, B vitamins, iron and additional nutrients from other free egg sources.
Peanut Allergy
Nuts are a good source of protein for children's diet. However, if your child needs to avoid any type of bean, he or she must not take risks. There are many protein sources as mentioned before. Nuts also provide sources of niacin, magnesium, vitamins E and B6, manganese, pantothenic acid, chromium, folacin, copper and biotin. Your child can get vitamins and nutrients by eating various foods from other food groups.
Soy allergy
Soybeans provide one of the highest quality proteins in the children's diet, also contain thiamin, riboflavin, iron, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, zinc and vitamin B6. This is present in certain soy foods. Small amounts of soybeans in processed foods do not cause a significant amount of nutrients. Limiting soybeans in the diet will not cause nutritional problems if the child eats various fruits, vegetables, whole grains and is rich in protein sources.
Flour allergy
Wheat is wheat that you can replace with other wheat. Allergies to other oats such as corn, rice, barley, and wheat are not common. But, you need to choose other wheat carefully because of the possibility of cross contact. Be sure to choose alternative wheat from reputable sources.
Flour is often enriched with additional nutrients. The process of grinding wheat can also remove important nutrients, so make sure you choose enriched wheat. One or two servings of wheat enriched in each meal can help meet important nutritional needs for vitamin B, folacin and iron.
You can replace wheat flour with wheat enriched to provide the same nutrients as flour. But, replacing wheat flour with other wheat flour can affect the results. Follow recipes carefully to get optimal results.
Fish allergy
Fish is a good source of protein. Fish contain nutrients niacin, vitamins B6, B12, A and E. Fish also contain phosphorus, selenium, magnesium, iron and zinc. If your child has to avoid fish, you can find the same nutrients in other protein sources such as meat, whole grains and nuts.
