At what age can you give apple juice to a child and how to do it right?

Apple juice is considered one of the most healthy and tasty for children. But untimely putting it in the feed can cause the opposite result: the health and health of the baby will deteriorate. In this article we will talk about how old and how much this product can be given to a child, as well as in what situations juice may not only be useful, but also curative.

Apple juice is a unique product. It is considered recommended for baby food from an early age, since it is difficult to find a product that would have such a set of nutrients and vitamins and was considered the safest in terms of the likelihood of an allergic reaction. For most regions, apples are a “native” fruit, a familiar food product, which is why apple juice allergy is a rare occurrence.

Apple drink is rich in vitamin C, and therefore it is a great helper of children's immunity in the face of various diseases. It has a lot of iron, which is important for blood saturation with hemoglobin. B vitamins normalize the nervous system. Potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, phosphorus, as well as about a dozen more minerals - not every fruit can boast such a set.

Apple juice has a pronounced antioxidant property, it helps the body to quickly get rid of waste products of metabolism, removes toxins, improves blood properties. Due to the content of organic acids, this product improves digestion, has diuretic and choleretic properties.

At women's and parental forums on the Internet you can find a lot of reasoning about how and when to properly enter the juice from apples in the infant's diet. This drink is one of the first among other juices shown for baby food. And some even give him a three-month baby and at the same time do not notice any negative changes in his well-being.

But still recommended for such foods is considered to be the age of 6 months. Why exactly six months? In the first six months of life, the digestion and metabolism of the child are arranged in such a way that it does not require anything other than mother's milk or formula (in the absence of milk). Yes, the baby will be able to digest apple juice at 3 and 4 months, but he will not receive much benefit from it, since many chemical components of the juice from apples, for which, in fact, are given to children, are not simply digested at this age and leave children's body with urine and feces almost unchanged.

The drink will give pleasure to the child with its taste and will give the nutrients to the growing body to the fullest when the enzymes necessary for splitting the acids are produced in the child’s body in sufficient quantities. And this is the age of six months.

For the first acquaintance of a baby with an apple drink, you should not use a bottled product adapted for children. And even more so should refuse from canned and packaged juice from stores, which is not intended for children in general. It is best to make the kid juice yourself. It's very easy to make, even a juicer is not needed for this.

The apple is washed, cleaned, grated and quickly squeezed juice from the resulting mashed potatoes into a teaspoon. As the first apple, the green apple is optimal, as red and yellow fruit varieties can cause increased gas formation and allergies.

If you give the juice for the first time, limited to a very small amount - about a third of the volume of a teaspoon. If a child has a tendency to allergies and atopic dermatitis, even such a small amount of juice is diluted with water in half.

During the day, the mother should carefully observe her child: if a rumbling appeared in the stomach, became a liquid stool, a rash appeared in any part of the body, you should temporarily abandon the idea of ​​drinking toddler juice. If nothing like this happened, you can slightly increase the amount of juice - up to half a teaspoon, then to a whole spoonful. By 7.5 months, the daily rate of apple juice for a baby is 50 ml. On this and you can navigate.

Juice can be given as a standalone drink, as well as introduced into the composition of multifruit drinks, for example, mixed with pear juice or carrot drink.

Apple juice without pulp is recommended for children in the period of ARVI disease. It contains vitamin C, and although ascorbic acid, according to recent studies, does not accelerate recovery, but it helps strengthen the immune system at this important moment for the body. When constipated children will benefit from juice with pulp: due to the large amount of pectin, the product has an excellent laxative effect.

If you give your child homemade juice, never squeeze it for future use, only the drink that is prepared immediately before use will be really useful.

If you buy juice from well-known manufacturers of baby food, make sure that the lid creates cotton when opening the bottle, and after opening do not store juice for more than a day. The fact that the child did not finish, you can drink to adults - for them, apple juice is also very useful.

Never give a child an apple juice on an empty stomach. There are a lot of acids in it and it will be a strong blow to the stomach and pancreas. Treat your child to this product after he has eaten the main portion of his lunch or breakfast.

If you use a grater to rub the apple, get a grater made of plastic. Iron fixture changes the composition of the fruit mass, causing almost instantaneous oxidation.

Before the first feeding you should consult a pediatrician who is observing the child. The doctor will be able to exclude factors that are a temporary contraindication for the use of apple juice - indigestion, stomatitis, tonsillitis. It is also not necessary to give juice at the moment when teeth are being actively cut, as it can cause irritation on the already inflamed gums.

Do not add sugar to your child’s homemade drink and do not buy the finished product with sugar content. After sweet foods, it will be difficult to introduce other products into the diet of an infant baby, for example, vegetable purees, since they will like it much less.

Dr. Komarovsky will tell you about the most useful apple or apple juice in the next video.