Friday, August 24, 2012

The 13 Vitamins Your Child Needs To Grow Healthy

NOTE: The best way to treat a cold or the flu is to prevent it from ever happening. You can bolster your defenses with vitamin C and other supplements.

by Alan Greene, MD
Special for Diet.com

You know that it is wise to back up your computer’s hard drive; I recommend backing up your child’s food drive with a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement. This simple habit could improve your child’s health and even intelligence.

For young babies, breast milk provides an ideal food.

The match between their complex nutritional needs and the milk that moms make is spectacular. Even so, I do suggest that many breastfed babies take 200 IU of vitamin D daily, as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends – but not because of any lack in breast milk. We are built to get vitamin D from sun exposure. Because of the amount of time babies spend indoors, and the depleted-ozone-caused need for sunscreen when babies spend much time outdoors, many babies need an extra boost of this important vitamin, linked not just to building strong bones, but also to preventing breast cancer, colon cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

Children should be able to get all of the vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients they need for optimum development by eating the right combinations and right amounts of healthful foods.

But the reality is that most kids today do NOT get the micronutrients they need from what they eat. Not by a long shot.

By some estimates, only 2% of kids regularly eat the recommended number of servings of different food groups. The result is that, even though the typical American child eats too many calories, the typical child is getting suboptimal levels of many key nutrients, including thousands of food components (phytonutrients) we are just beginning to learn about.

There are 13 major micronutrients -- “the Greene 13” -- that concern me the most:

• calcium
• fiber
• folic acid
• iron
• magnesium
• omega 3 fatty acids (especially DHA)
• phosphorous (except for kids who get too much from carbonated beverages)
• potassium
• vitamin A
• vitamin C
• vitamin D
• vitamin E
• zinc

Most kids don’t get enough of at least one of these. One in six girls get iron at levels low enough to affect their test scores. Seven out of 10 boys and nine out of 10 girls don’t get enough calcium at key times of growth.

A daily multivitamin is more than just a safety net for occasional nutritional accidents. It is also like spackle to fill in the small nutritional holes, gaps, and cracks that many children develop every day. One could compare it to defragging the nutrients, or to a patch for their operating system. And beyond this, it can help a child thrive the way we all want.

We know these nutrients affect our intelligence, our growth, our behavior, and our immune systems, and that typical American children do not get enough.

I recommend starting the supplement spackle at the first birthday, unless the child is on a toddler formula that already has the extras added. The body and brain are growing especially fast up to age 3, when many kids are notoriously picky eaters (with French fries the most popular vegetable, apple juice the most popular fruit, and white flour the most popular grain).

So what should you look for in a multivitamin?

Depending on how your child eats, you probably want to supplement with 50% to 100% of the age-appropriate recommended doses of at least “the Greene 13” listed above. You may not find all of these in one place. In fact, it can be a great idea to look for other sources of calcium, fiber, and omega 3’s (DHA), either in foods or in supplements.

Most children probably do not need or benefit from extra-large supplemental doses of vitamins or minerals, and especially not vitamin A or iron. Most children certainly do not benefit from artificial colors or preservatives, or from extra helpings of sugars or artificial sweeteners found in some children’s vitamins.

Whatever vitamin you choose, the simple habit of a daily multivitamin/mineral can be an important back-up to your child’s food drive, a smart idea in a culture that seems bent on enticing children with foods that undermine their body’s wisdom.

Dr. Alan Greene, author of Raising Baby Green, is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of California San Francisco. He is the Chief Medical Officer of A.D.A.M, Chair of The Organic Center and on the Advisory Board of Healthy Child Healthy World, and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University's Packard Children's Hospital.

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