However, as child nutrition experts have been pointing out for decades now, how the child develops within is as much crucial to his overall health as how he grows outwardly.
In this age of greater challenges and complexity, when schools are continually raising the intellectual standard for students, and technological sophistication has become a way of life, children need to be much smarter in order to compete and succeed in the world of tomorrow.
Brain development is also important because of its very narrow window of opportunity. Recent studies show that during the first three years of life, the brain triples its weight and establishes about 1,000 trillion nerve connections – that’s twice as many as adults have. Failure to develop this growth can lead to serious loss of intellectual capability that can affect the child for life.
Thus, parents should provide their babies with appropriate toys that enhance their mental abilities, such as those involving numbers, shapes, colors and symbols. They should also actively interact with their children to help their development.
Most importantly, they should promote intake of nutritional sources of the ingredient called DHA, or Docosahexaenoic Acid, a long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid found in human milk. The DHA is an important component in brain development because it is a primary building block of the human brain and retinal tissue.
This is why Mead Johnson, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of milk formulas, has developed the Enfa line of milk supplements that are rich in DHA. One of them is Enfakid, the only one in the market that provides the right level of nutritional ingredient for the proper brain and body development of pre-schoolers.