Kefir has become a popular fermented milk product mainly among the Slavic people. Nutritionists say about its undeniable benefits, insisting on the daily use of this drink. Even obstetricians recommend that pregnant women drink a glass of kefir a day. For a child, fermented milk products sometimes become the only suppliers of calcium in case of lactase deficiency.
Kefir and baby
The benefits of kefir for child nutrition
Many parents are faced with the fact that their child has lactase deficiency. That is, his body cannot absorb a special milk sugar - lactose. As a result, the baby suffers from increased gas production, abdominal pain and diarrhea.
The peculiarity of fermented milk products, including kefir, is the absence of lactose - it breaks down as a result of fermentation processes and is no longer dangerous for the intestines of the baby. In addition to the absence of difficult-to-digest sugar, kefir contains in its composition a huge amount of lactic acid bacteria, which, entering the intestine, normalize its work, having a beneficial effect on the microflora.
It is noteworthy that kefir becomes a real salvation for children who have had an intestinal infection, especially if it was a rotavirus, after recovering from which, the body may lose its ability to absorb lactose within two to three weeks. This causes diarrhea from drinking milk. Kefir in such situations can replace milk, provided that the age of the child allows it.
Composition and nutritional value
Kefir is prepared both at home and on an industrial scale based on milk and kefir mushroom starter culture. Various technologies make it possible to use both whole milk and its dry analog in the cooking process. To select your preferred type of ingredients, you need to carefully read the information on the package.
Kefir production
Kefir contains a certain amount of fat, which is indicated separately on the front of the package, as well as proteins and carbohydrates. As a rule, 100 g of a product with a fat content of 3.2% contains 3 g of protein and 4 g of carbohydrates.
In addition, kefir is rich in essential trace elements:
- phosphorus;
- magnesium;
- calcium;
- sodium.
In other countries, koumiss and ayran have become popular and equally useful products similar to kefir.
How to choose the right one
When choosing any product, especially fermented milk, you should pay attention to the shelf life. The best age for a finished product for a child to eat is 1 day. Kefir prepared yesterday has a sufficient number of beneficial bacteria and a minimum percentage of alcoholic fermentation.
Attention! Children can be given kefir both marked "for children" and regular. Fresh product is safe for babies' digestion if it does not expire.
An important point to pay attention to is the presence of lactic acid bacteria or kefir mushroom in the composition indicated on the package. The lack of information on the number of lactic acid microorganisms should be decisive. A product that does not contain a kefir mushroom or information on the number of lactic acid bacteria cannot be called kefir. As a rule, such products additionally contain butter, cream and milk powder. Fermentation takes place under the influence of so-called starter cultures, which do not have their own lactic acid bacteria.
Store or home
Every responsible mother at least once thought about how to make kefir for babies at home. Women create entire communities for the cultivation of kefir mushrooms, share the secrets of caring for them. If a mother has the opportunity to easily get a kefir mushroom and, on its basis, prepare a fermented milk delicacy on her own, not only the child, but also the mother herself, who has put her whole soul into the process, will enjoy the result.
Home cooking
However, modern stores offer a wide selection of fermented milk products with different fat content and shelf life, which can greatly facilitate the work of a young mother, without prejudice to babies in the amount of benefits received.
Fatness
The kidneys of a child in the first three years of life are not able to withstand the load of heavy food. Kefir belongs to foods, the fat content of which can create certain difficulties for an immature paired body. Therefore, the pediatrician, Evgeny Olegovich Komarovsky, urges not to feed children with this useful delicacy if its fat content is higher than 2%.
Cooking kefir at home
A lot of mothers try to make as much effort as possible to ensure that their babies eat only high-quality products. Therefore, not knowing which store kefir is better to choose for a baby, such women tend to cook it on their own, sharing recipes with each other. Kefir cooked at home is popular in families living outside the city and having fresh cow (or goat) milk within walking distance (or their own).
Having milk, it is enough to get the leaven and you can start preparing a healthy drink. As a starter, it is easiest to use a small amount of ready-made store-bought kefir or fermented baked milk, the packages of which indicate the presence of lactic acid bacteria or kefir mushroom. Having at home only two or three tablespoons of such a leaven, you can get a liter of kefir.
First, you need to warm up the milk to room temperature. If by accident the milk overheats, you will have to wait until it cools down. It is necessary to add starter culture to milk of the required temperature - 3 tablespoons of starter culture for 1 liter of milk. Mix the ingredients thoroughly, until the starter culture no longer visually stands out. Cover the resulting mixture and leave to ferment for a day. In a day, one-day kefir is ready.
Important! Using not pasteurized, but homemade milk, it is better to boil it before use, since in its raw form it may contain unwanted bacteria. From a child safety standpoint, boiled milk from a domestic cow is preferable to raw milk.
The percentage of kefir can be adjusted by choosing the fat content of the milk used. The fatter milk is taken as an ingredient, the fatter the finished product will be.
Permissible age for feeding with kefir
There is no information in the medical guidelines of the World Health Organization on how to introduce kefir into complementary foods. Pediatricians, unable to refer to the recommended dates for the first use, came to a consensus that fermented milk products should be given to a child not earlier than 6 months of age, that is, when the baby is ready to introduce complementary foods.
Interesting. WHO cannot give recommendations on when kefir can be introduced into complementary foods, because the organization has no idea what kefir is. It belongs to the dishes of the national cuisine and does not have a wide territorial distribution.
What can be combined with
Children who eat milk for the first 6 months of life understand the sweet taste instinctively. With the introduction of complementary foods, they have to get acquainted with unsweetened vegetables and sour kefir. If the child refused to drink a new healthy drink because of its unusual taste, you can try adding sweet dried fruits to it, carefully breaking them with a blender. The sweetened product is likely to please your baby.
Chopping dried fruits
The introduction of complementary foods is often accompanied by the appearance of another fermented milk dish - cottage cheese. At first, children do not like its taste so much as the opportunity to eat from a spoon. This entertainment is perfectly combined with the consumption of kefir. To correctly calculate the amount of the required dose, you need to divide the volume of one feeding into 4 parts, according to age recommendations. One part of the eaten volume can be cottage cheese and the remaining three - kefir. In this proportion, it will be possible to enrich the intestinal microflora and deliver calcium into the body.
Kefir rates in complementary foods by month
Kefir, although very useful for digestion, is still not suitable for feeding in large quantities to infants. Many women, having introduced their baby to a new dish at the beginning of the second half of their life, feel significant relief associated with the cancellation of at least one breastfeeding. Mothers of bottle-fed babies are happy to offer kefir to babies instead of a nightly portion of the mixture. However, pediatricians recommend offering this product to the child during the second breakfast.
How often to give
Babies who love fermented milk products are happy to use them in huge quantities. But doctors warn parents against encouraging such a diet. You can ask each mother individually about how to give kefir to a child, with a local pediatrician who knows all the features of the development of each individual child. However, the average baby should not be given this product more than once a day, at the same time clearly observing the permissible amount of drink, in accordance with age.
Number
Having decided from how many months it is possible to give kefir to an infant, each mother should understand that the volume of milk drunk will always be slightly more than the permissible amount of other, denser dishes consumed by the baby for 1 feeding. Therefore, if a six-month-old baby can normally drink 210 ml of milk or mixture, then he can drink no more than 150 ml of kefir.
Bottle feeding
Possible problems
It is noted that the use of foods based on fermented milk products can have a laxative effect on the functioning of the digestive system. This is manifested by the frequent urge to empty the intestines. Therefore, you can give kefir to a baby when he does not have diarrhea after consumption.
The fears of adults related to the fact that kefir contains alcohol are not unfounded. Alcoholic fermentation processes really take place in the product. However, in a fresh drink, the amount of alcohol is negligible, and it cannot cause any harm to the health of the child. If the product was forgotten in the refrigerator for several weeks, after which one of the relatives decided to treat the child to them, there really is a danger of getting alcohol poisoning. As a result of long-term fermentation processes, alcohols accumulate, and a harmless fermented milk drink turns into a real alcoholic one.
Kefir, when breastfed or artificially fed, can cause very real harm to a newborn. In general, domestic pediatricians categorically do not recommend giving it to children under three months of age. In foreign medical literature, it is impossible to find information about the dangers of a drink for a baby in the first three months of life. This is not due to the fact that kefir is safe, but to the fact that not a single official study has been conducted on feeding three-month-old babies with kefir. This product can definitely harm the health of the baby if you feed it before the baby is six months old.
Signs of allergies
Food allergy after consuming kefir is an extremely rare case. This can happen with excessive consumption of the drink. It is very difficult for children's kidneys to filter out the incoming amount of protein, especially if the fat content of the drink is more than 2%. In case of violation of the diet and abuse of the amount of kefir feedings, the following symptoms may appear:
- rashes on the body - the rash is unformed, does not have a visually defined center with a wen, no papules;
- swelling of the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract;
- itching of the skin, mainly in places of rashes;
- nausea, vomiting.
Important! Subject to the feeding regimen and exclusion of overfeeding, kefir cannot cause allergic reactions. Yogurt, on the other hand, may well be an allergen because it contains various flavors, thickeners, dyes and preservatives.
Even if natural yogurt, which does not contain any artificial additives, has strawberries, strawberries or cherries as a sweetener and color, such a product is likely to cause skin rashes and swelling of mucous membranes.
Boy drinking a drink
Do not be afraid of kefir. Everything is good in moderation - babies also suffer from the banal overeating of milk. Therefore, do not be afraid to introduce kefir into complementary foods. Its benefits for the child's body are incomparable with any other product. In addition, the use of ready-made fermented milk products in the nutrition of children greatly facilitates mother's work - it is enough to pour the drink into a bottle, and the dish for the baby is ready.
