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Adding egg or milk can reduce stunting in young children: study
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- Bengaluru researchers say that animal product protein is better digested.
- Researchers measured the digestibility and quality of commonly used complementary foods in young children.
- They found that mung bean, which is a legume and is considered to be a high-quality protein source, is not as well digested and absorbed as other high-quality food proteins such as egg.
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- Reason for stunting:(1) About 38% of children in India below the age of five years are stunted.(2) Reason for this is that young children consume mainly cereal-based food, which lacks quality protein that can be well digested and is limited in the content of certain essential amino acids such as lysine.(3) The team found that the risk of stunting in children aged 1 - 3 years (in the National Family Health-4 survey) was reduced by 10% when high quality proteins such as egg and milk were consumed along with a combination of cereals and pulses.(4) Stunting happens early before children turn three. While consuming quality protein that contains adequate amounts of digestible essential amino acids does help in reducing the risk of stunting, it cannot completely prevent it.
- Ideal diet:(1) Young children’s diet between the age of 1-3 years should contain a minimum of 100 grams of cereal (rice or wheat) and 45 grams of legume per day.(2) The equivalent will be the addition of an egg or 200 ml of milk or milk products to the diet every day.(3) The researchers measured the essential amino acid digestion of four foods (rice, finger millet, mung dal and egg) commonly consumed complementary food by children below two.(4) Digestibility of essential amino acids was least for mung dal (65%), it was highest for egg (87%).
Source
The hindu