THE selection of the supplementary vitamins that may be needed should be one of the simplest things the physician has to do in prescribing the diet for an infant or child. At least one would be inclined to believe scientific nutrition must have progressed this far. And yet confusion and wasteful error characterize the customary use of vitamin supplements in academic centers as well as by practitioners. Why?The remarkable variety of commercial preparations of vitamins now available makes a choice difficult. Without elementary knowledge of the vitamins needed to maintain the health of normal infants, in contrast to the unusual requirements in disease, it is easy to yield to the temptation to give every infant and child a superabundance of vitamins in an all-inclusive supplement—just to be sure.Such casualness amounts to lavish generosity.
展开▼
