Why you should avoid adding salt and sugar to your infant’s food

Salt and sugar are the two very common elements added to food to make it appealing to our palate. Children especially love to have much of these two elements in their food. Little children are especially fond of sugary foods. But too much of either of these two things can cause harm to your child. Parents usually tend to make their children’s food salty or sugary to make their food tasty. Until your child is one or one and half a years old, you should not add sugar to their food. Even when they are one or one and a half years old, not more than one pinch of sugar or salt is enough for them.

When the baby shifts from breast milk to solid foods at the age of six months, parents feed them packeted or canned foods which contain salt and sugar as main ingredients. But too much salt or sugar is always bad for your child.

Why you should not add salt to your child’s food:

• Salt contains sodium which can boost the risk of high blood pressure and kidney damage. What is alarming is that younger children run higher risk of high blood pressure than older ones.
• An excess of salt present in the body can be a big cause for kidney failure. Kidneys are the natural filters in our body and they control the amount of various elements in the body. But too much salt in the body disrupts the function of the kidneys and the internal balance of the body may be hampered.
• Dehydration may be another result of extra amount of salt in the body. Water dissolves the salt in the body and cleans it out. You can do a test to prove this. You can drink salty water and find out whether it quenches your thirst or increases it. Another test can also be done. Fill a glass with to the brink and add sugar to it. You’ll find that the water won’t spill over because the salt has been dissolved in it.

Why you should not add sugar to your child’s food:

• Feeding sugar constantly to your baby’s food would give them a sweet tooth. As your baby grows up, they’ll be attracted towards sweet foods only and be less interested in other foods.
• Sugar is one of the causes of tooth decay. The sweet food left in the mouth is a good medium for oral bacteria and sugar helps such bacteria survive the most. So too much sugary food may mean tooth decay.
• Bottle feeding can increase the risk of ear infection in babies. It happens because when the baby is lying, the milk slides from mouth into the ears. The sugar in the milk may boost bacteria and can cause infection in the ears.
• High sugar level in your child’s diet can even make them vulnerable to diabetes in future.