Health Foods For Children
Functional foods are products that have been scientifically proven to have a health effect. For a food to be called health-promoting, it must promote health, well-being, or reduce the risk of disease.
Health foods for children
A health-promoting food can be:
- Completely natural, ie the product contains naturally occurring health-promoting ingredients
- Food from which a harmful ingredient has been removed or to which a useful ingredient has been added
- A product whose nature of one or more components has changed
- Food in which the bioavailability of one or more components has changed
- Any combination of the above options
For example, dairy products containing lactic acid bacteria, xylitol chewing gum, and cholesterol-lowering margarine are functional foods. In this article, we will focus on probiotics and prebiotics.
Probiotics and prebiotics are part of health-promoting products and are often also part of children’s diets. They are believed to have a balancing effect on the gastrointestinal microbiota and a positive effect on overall health. A synbiotic is an interaction of probiotics and prebiotics that
Probiotics
Probiotics are living microbes that are believed to balance the digestive microbiota and thus have a positive effect on health. Probiotics are usually associated with sour milk products and other fermented foods. Shops now sell, for example, milk, buttermilk, juices, yoghurts, cheese and berry soups with added probiotics.
In particular, certain lactic acid bacteria and the yeast Saccharomyces boulardii have been used as probiotics. The benefits of lactic acid bacteria include:
- Balance the intestinal microbiota
- Reduce the risk of response diseases and shorten the duration of diarrheal diseases
- Reduce the morbidity of children and have a positive effect on children’s oral health
- Fight against various pathogens
- Produce cytokines that control the immune system
The effectiveness of probiotic treatment has also been studied in the treatment of other diseases:
- Allergy prevention and treatment
- Prevention and treatment of atopic eczema
- Treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases
Yogurt
Yogurt is a dairy product that is made from milk by fermentation with the help of lactic acid bacteria. It is a natural source of bacteria like probiotics. Yogurt is a great way to increase a child’s intake of calcium and other nutrients – especially if an infant or older child is not consuming enough milk or infant formula.
Prebiotics
Prebiotics are indigestible food components that promote the growth or activity of one or more bacterial strains in the colon. The indigestible fiber feeds the probiotics already living in the gut and helps them reproduce. The purpose of the bacterial strain is that the altered intestinal flora promotes health.
In industry, inulin and fructooligosaccharides come from chicory root, but prebiotics are also obtained from oatmeal, artichoke, banana, onion, leek and garlic, for example.
Fructooligosaccharides play an important role in the development of the intestinal bacterial flora. Their fermentation in the colon produces short-chain fatty acids such as acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid:
- They are a source of energy for the colonocyte
- Improve the bioavailability of calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron
