176
Counsels on Diet and Foods
conducive to health, thereby saving much distress.—
Testimonies for
the Church 4:502, 1880
345. Children are also fed too frequently, which produces fever-
ishness and suffering in various ways. The stomach should not be
kept constantly at work, but should have its periods of rest. Without it
children will be peevish and irritable and frequently sick.—
The Health
Reformer, September, 1866
[
Children to Be Taught When and How to Eat—288
]
[
Early Training of Daniel—241
]
[
See Section IX, Regularity in Eating
]
Early Education of the Appetite
346. The importance of training children to right dietetic habits
can hardly be overestimated. The little ones need to learn that they
[230]
eat to live, not live to eat. The training should begin with the infant
in its mother’s arms. The child should be given food only at regular
intervals, and less frequently as it grows older. It should not be given
sweets, or the food of older persons, which it is unable to digest. Care
and regularity in the feeding of infants will not only promote health,
and thus tend to make them quiet and sweet-tempered, but will lay the
foundation of habits and will be a blessing to them in after years.
As children emerge from babyhood, great care should still be taken
in educating their tastes and appetite. Often they are permitted to eat
what they choose and when they choose, without reference to health.
The pains and money so often lavished upon unwholesome dainties
lead the young to think that the highest object in life, and that which
yields the greatest amount of happiness, is to be able to indulge the
appetite. The result of this training is gluttony, then comes sickness,
which is usually followed by dosing with poisonous drugs.
Parents should train the appetites of their children, and should not
permit the use of unwholesome foods. But in the effort to regulate the
diet, we should be careful not to err in requiring children to eat that
which is distasteful, or to eat more than is needed. Children have rights,
they have preferences, and when these preferences are reasonable, they
should be respected....
Mothers who gratify the desires of their children at the expense
of health and happy tempers, are sowing seeds of evil that will spring