The first thing that is added to the milk mixture for feeding the newborn baby is sugar in some form. As we saw yesterday, cow’s milk contains about half as much sugar as mother’s milk, and in order to give enough nutritive value to nourish the baby and give it energy to grow, this extra amount must be added.
The kind of sugar added is not of very great importance. Ordinary table sugar, granulated sugar, is used in many free clinics exclusively, and the babies thrive just as well on that as with more fancy forms.
Dextrine and maltose are considered to be more digestible than granulated table or cane sugar, and since special infants’ foods con-tain these, that accounts for their popularity. However, these sugars can be obtained just as well in ordinary Karocorn syrup.
To the pint of milk, therefore, that a new-born baby of average weight (8 pounds) requires a day, must be added either two tablespoons of granulated sugar, corn syrup, or a dextrine-maltose mixture.
Evaporated milk has found much favor of late years in place of cow’s milk. Evaporated milk is not to be confused with condensed milk. It is prepared by heating fresh mixed herd milk in a partial vacuum until about 60 per cent of the water is removed. The residue is treated in such a way that the fat globules are broken up and do not rise to the surface as cream. This mixture is put in cans and can be purchased at drug stores or grocery stores.
In preparing it for infant’s use the water content must be again restored, so that the formula would be:
Evaporated milk 10 ounces Sugar 2 Water 20 ”
Evaporated milk is always clean and appears to be more digestible than whole cow’s milk.