Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Feeding a Baby Japanese advice...

Putting the events of the last month aside for the moment, I was reminded the other day of the strange discrepancies between the Japanese and English health advice.

My wife told me a story of one Japanese housewife in Italy, who had a bit of a barney with their husband over whether their child should eat pasta, but there are quite a few differences between advice between countries.

The one that strikes me most is the difference in opinion over meat in the UK versus Japan. The NHS states meat, including pork, beef and lamb as excellent sources of protein, whereas the Sakaide city office guidelines maintain you should refrain from all but chicken until ~9 months, and ham until 1 year. The NHS also recommends cow's milk as an option, whereas this is considered dubious until about 1 year in Japan*.

Of course, there are a lot of points in agreement: No honey, no nuts, etc. But I think its good to be aware of the different advice.

That said, I've not gotten into a fight over my baby's dinner yet..

*Specifically, they mention the milk should be thoroughly cooked/boiled before consumption