When talking about food, the most common is to offer guidelines, recommendations, tips and rules to try to get children to eat everything.
This happens, as we said, after six months, since before there is no possibility of controlling the type of food because all they drink is milk.
From that moment, it is taken for granted that children need our intervention to eat in a balanced way and that they are unable to choose (they even made us a pyramid with the food they should eat).
The truth is that it is not. It seems a lie, but if we let them eat without intervening they would make a diet, probably, more balanced than we could prepare them.
Dream strange, but children are born with this ability. We already commented a few days ago that they know perfectly how much food they need and that hunger makes them eat when they need it and, lack thereof, stop eating when they no longer need it. The truth is that they not only know calories, but also nutrients. That is why they are breast-fed on demand and that is why it is said that food is also on demand.
In 1939 Clara M. Davis presented a study she had carried out for years, probably the most ambitious, detailed and extensive that exists on the feeding of children.
Davis suspected that children's bodies knew better than anyone else what they needed and that the same body made them eat what they needed. That is why he investigated what happened if children were allowed to decide what and how much to eat.
He took care of 15 weaned children between 6 and 11 months old, children of mothers without resources (some of them malnourished, with rickets ...), on a provisional basis and studied them for a period of between 6 months (when he left first) and 4 and a half years (when the last two children left).
During that time each gram of food they ate, each deposition they made, was checked, checked, checked, weighed, measured, etc. It is estimated that between 36,000 and 37,500 records were made.
The method of feeding was to allow children to choose food. They could decide what to eat, how much and how (it was not said “this is the first dish and this is the second one”) within a range of 33 available foods.
These foods were presented in isolation (without mixing with others) and cooked without dressings (the salt was separate) and there was representation of all the groups: dairy, fruits, animal proteins, cereals, vegetables and legumes.
Although they were accompanied by adults, they were not allowed to offer any clue or indication to the children of what might be a good food choice or the amount that might be necessary.
In other words, the method was simply to put food in front of the children so that they ate what they wanted.
The results were the following:
- Each child made a different diet, in fact they did not even resemble each other, but when studying them thoroughly it was seen that they were balanced (all).
Given these data, the scientific community asked the author if she was saying that all the recommendations that existed then ceased to be valid.
Davis could not say it because he confessed that his study "had a trap." All foods were healthy, healthy and of unquestionable nutritional value. It would have been difficult for children to suffer from a disease derived from diet.
This study that is almost 70 years showed a reality that nobody imagined. Used to making children (and adults) eat what the recommendations said, it seemed incredible to note that Humans, from birth, are able to choose a balanced diet.
But of this many years ago and yet we continue with guidelines, advice and recommendations that tell us what our children should eat, you will surely think. Yes, it is true, and it is not because there are no other studies that demonstrate what Dr. Davis commented then.
In a more recent study, children were offered a menu consisting of two meals (first and second course). The first was a standard meal, whose energy density was controlled based on the amount of fats and carbohydrates. The second dish was left to the children's choice.
Without adult intervention and leaving children to choose what and how much to eat, they realized that when the first dish had a lower caloric content the second, the one they chose, had more and vice versa.
In another study of 181 preschoolers, they showed that when children were allowed to eat, deciding for themselves the amount of food to eat, the variations in total caloric intake during the day differed by approximately 10% between a few days. and others, with an average variation between meals of up to 40%.
That is, when at one meal they ate little, or very little, at the next they ate more and, when at one they ate too much, on the next they ate less food.
In short, we already know what would happen if we let them eat them: they would make a balanced diet (although I would recommend that the foods to be chosen be healthy).
