Show FOR THE BETTER TOO even babies are affected OP by ESe eating habits WW features LINCOLN chances are your great grandmother would have no more thought of eating a love apple than of flying to china but now we call love apples by the more prosaic name of tomatoes and not only eat them but drink em too that doean doesn t prove much except that people a eating habits change the university of nebraska s food and nutrition laboratory is trying to see to it that they change tor for the better take babies six weeks old for instance A lot of mothers would gape in astonishment if you said why don t we give the baby a nice helping of meat today they might even tell you scornfully that babies don t get meat until they re at least nine months old babies lite like it yet dr ruth M leverton uni hersity nurrit onist and two ians have been feeding meat to tiny babies for some time now the babies 1 ke it and the results have interested even the amer can mod med ical association journal which doesn doean t get interested very iery aas ly the big thing that dr lei lezer er ton and her associates found is that meat added for eight week to the diets of babies as young as six weeks can knock out nu tnt ional anemia this they say is important because that type of anemia is common to most infants the researchers don t pretend that blocking anemia from babyhood Is going to produce a race of super men and women but they do say that anemia keeps the human body little or big from per cent performance it may be that freeing infants from anemia will let them grow strong enough to toss off some of the usual childhood diseases any way that a what dr leverton hopes and the laboratory is assisting with further study along that line launch experiments the university s food and autri tion laboratory launched its attack on anemia seven years ago it found that meat added to the diets of a group of co eds reduced simple anemia during the war a second study revealed that meat was of benefit to blood bank donors next came a study of expectant mothers A meat supplement to their diets boosted their hemoglobin values which is a fancy way of saying they did not become anemic encouraged by these results the researchers turned to babies when the study started strained meat for babies was not yet on the market but meat processors cooperated and produced strained meat of custard consistency which could be added to baby formulas since then a meat product has come on the market commercially tn in cooperation with doctors at child saving institute in omaha at st thomas orphanage in lincoln and with a small group of parents the battle of babies versus anemia was begun at the outset a third of an ounce of strained meat was add ed daily to the formulas tor for babie babies six weeks old this amount was in creased until at the end of a week an average of a full ounce of meat a day was being added show marked gain records of child saving institute disclose that the 18 meat babies showed an average gain of 13 3 per cent in hemoglobin content of the blood at the end of eight weeks their competitors 15 babies of the same age group and same general condition who did not get meat lost 10 3 per cent during the sane same period the red cell values of the meat eaters jumped an average of 22 2 per cent while their campeti tors chalked up a gain of only 6 62 2 per cent nurses at the tle tl e institute reported the babies who got meat seemed less fussy and slept better than their competitors the institution s pediatrician said the general ph condition of the meat eaters was better toe too results comparable to those at saving institute were obtained at st thomas orphanage amon among 9 the babies in private homes the rec ree eras oras were not as spectacular probably because the routine of care was net not as exacting but even in the homes the meat eating babies showed no loss in hemoglobin con tent of the blood while their corn com peti tors who did not get meat lost 8 per cent it was this ability ot of the meat eaters to avoid hemoglobin loss that the researchers consider important according to dr leverton it means that the protein in the meat diet kept the babies from taking the downward road to nutritional anemia |