The liquid fills their tiny stomachs and ruins their appetite for foods that contain nutrients and calories they need. According to a study published in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics, the resulting malnutrition can prevent babies from developing normally. The finding serves as a warning to parents who, in a misguided effort to limit their babies' fat consumption, substitute fruit juice for whole milk or formula in their babies' bottles. Despite doctors' constant preaching against the sins of saturated fat for adults and older children, pediatricians agree that fat should not be restricted for children under two. Young children need the protein and the fat found in dairy products for normal growth and brain development.
Fruit juice contains neither.
What most parents do not realize is that it doesn't take a lot of juice to throw a baby's diet off kilter. Investigators at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, examined eight children, ages 14 to 27 months, whose growth had lagged behind their peers'. Each of them was drinking 12 to 30 oz. When you give children one single source of calories, like juice, you're not giving them the minerals and nutrients for normal growth. Shortly after the parents started giving their children less juice and more milk, the infants began gaining weight.