Cooking for young kids - with alcohol or without? - Page 2

I try to avoid using alcohol when I know my kids are going to eat the meal. I use it only in a couple of dishes (and a small amount) like the spinach risotto. But, again, I don't think that such a small amount should hurt your kid.

Hic.

BDL

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pete 

Here's another old school trick my parents used, but would probably get you a visit from social services nowadays.  When we had a bad chest cold Mom and Dad would rub our chests with Metholatum, place a warm towel over top and give us a small shot of whiskey.  It sure made sleeping much easier!

I wouldn't recommend it, myself, and never gave kids hard alcohol like that (though if they wanted to taste the wine i'd let them have a teaspoon of it - they never liked it) but it sure seems less dubious than what would be officially (by any social services) a perfectly "acceptable" practice of prescribing young children amphetamines ("speed" in my day, ritalin today) to be taken for the rest of their lives!  

Speaking of social services, when my son was 6, we went on vacation in austria and i liked the dark beer there.  I would drink a small glass with supper.   Since i grew up with lots of alcohol around me i never liked it and never drank till well into adulthood and even then, half a glass of wine is my max.  So i get drunk with practically nothing.  We went to a park after supper and i was climbing on some of the things there with the kids and started laughing hilariously when i couldn't climb back down, and couldn;t stop laughing.  My son, in italian, at the top of his lungs, kept yelling "Mummy!  why do you have to drink all that beer and get drunk every night ! "  I was thinking, good thing he's yelling in italian or they'd be calling social services on ME - practically a tee totaler. 

Since most cooking requires the alcohol to be cooked out I really do not think it matters. Watch the sugar and salt content more as sugar makes the kids hyper and then you want a drink.

I would say watch the salt content, very young children are salt intolerant so they shouldn't have salt at all.

Originally Posted by Onei 

Is there a scintilla of scientific support for this little nugget of nutritional knowledge?

BDL

Just a little science conjecture with the ethanol vs. cooking; there'd have to be some retained in a dish. Evaporated ethanol is heavier than air, so partial pressure would demand a certain percentage to be retained within the dish. Things like stirring, fans, lids, surface area:volume, cooking time etc. would all alter this quantity. In the fish world, we deal with this uncertainty all the time through disolved oxygen (or in planted tanks, CO2). From that experience, you learn that it takes a lot of time and a very great body of knowledge as both a chemist and a physicist to calculate these things.

In my opinion, you're better off just calculating the maximum ml's of ethanol in the dish, estimating a serving size, and figuring in for mg/kg. From there, go bug some pediatricians about the NOAEL's (no adverse effect limit) for children and ethanol; they should be able to point you to something about monkies or rats getting drunk that will give you a good guide line. That's just me and my thoughts on calculated risk taking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boar_d_laze 

Originally Posted by Onei 

Is there a scintilla of scientific support for this little nugget of nutritional knowledge?

 

BDL

Err, yes. Only very small amounts are need by babies and toddlers so you shouldn't add extra salt to their food. Google the subject if you don't believe me.

To this point, none of the "science" in this thread has been very good.  Not to be snarky, but it's so much easier to look it up than try to channel your ex-lab partner's better study habits.

There's a USDA "alcohol burn-off" chart running around the net, based on a study done at the U of Washingtion showing approximate residual alcohol content after various cooking times and methods. 

When you look at the chart remember that the percentages are expressed as fractions of the fractional content of the original beverage which itself is a fraction of the entire dish.  So if 35% of the alcohol of one cup of (20%) sherry which comprises 50% of a sauce, and the portion size is 2 oz... the amount of alcohol is 7/100 of an ounce.  Not a lot. 

You also have to apply some common sense regarding the alcoholic content of reductions.  Trust the Force, Luke.  If you can't taste the alcohol per se, your sauce or stew or whatever is not terribly alcoholic. 

As I understand it, allowing your kids to eat food which has some amount of cooked off alcohol is more a matter of personal belief than health -- filtered through common sense.  I've certainly never seen any study which showed adverse effects from alcohol in the small quantities that are left on the plate in most dishes.

I certainly cooked with alcohol making family meals when my kids were little, and it doesn't seem to have done them any harm.  Both are smarter than me; one's getting his PhD in physics; the other just graduated with her BA (cum laude) and is going on to grad school her own bad self. 

But I'm also aware that it's a sensitive subject and would never cook with alcohol to serve to others' children without their approval.

BDL

Just an interesting fact - Italian cakes practically always have some alcohol (and it;s not burned off) and this means also kids' birthday cakes.  Since they almost exclusively make genoise cake in pastry shops and genoise hasn't got the greatest texture so it's traditionally soaked with syrup which is traditionally flavored with some horrendous liqueur like alkermes or rosolio.  I don;t know a single person who likes it, much less kids, but i haven't found many pastry shop cakes without it, and most kids birthday cakes are pink with these liqueurs. 

Not much alcohol at all, but still, it's uncooked alcohol. 

I doubt there is any harm done, except to the taste buds.  Most kids here don;t like cake (no wonder) (most adults don;t like cakes either for that matter) (except mine!)

Now the fact that they do it doesn;t mean it's healthy, but just what would half a tsp of alcohol actually do to a kid?  Does anyone know the medical consequences?  Why is it dangerous? What happens?

Presumably directed to me, and originally Posted by Onei 

Onei,

Unless I knew it was a particular hobby-horse, yes.  Since I do know it's a concern of yours I wouldn't salt your kid's food, or provide anything very salty for her (or him) either.

By the way, I still await your evidence that "a bit of extra salt" is harmful to toddlers. 

BDL

Quote:

Originally Posted by Onei ...Google the subject if you don't believe me.

OK, what Google search terms do you suggest? The ones I've tried result in a vary mixed bag of hearsay and opinion with what little scientific reports available show little adverse effects.
 

That chart doesn't account for even using a lid or not. Toss a lid on and you'll be retaining far more ethanol as a matter of condensation and partial pressure. There's no accounting for the mass, density, exposed surface area or internal temperature of what's being baked or flamed either. For that matter, burn time on a flambe would alter things as well. This is why I was recommending against trying to play science games and to just work out a worst case scenario of volume per serving.

Let's be honest though; everyone is dancing around the issue of NOAEL (No Observable Adverse Effect Level). I'm sure not finding results anywhere. My guess is that the thought of putting any ethanol in a child as a study is going to send someone off the deep end, regardless of levels. Could you imagine trying to propose this as a study group for FDA trials? Not going to happen. I think this leaves us with the option of trying to approximate the impact on other animals, and hoping that the neurology of humans is similar enough. Perhaps guessing at 22mg/dl by estimating the quantity of blood in your child (kind of a morbid thought) would be worth while, as that number has been tossed around as a threshold number for adults.

Outside of that, perhaps the fact that most kids don't seem to be nuts about the taste of ethanol might be worth considering; less booze in the food might make for fewer complaints. I sure couldn't stand the taste of ethanol when I was young, no matter how much I wanted to.

Hi boar_d_laze

Sorry for the delay in my response I have been away for a couple of days.

In response to your last post...

I know this doesn't qualify as scientific evidence but I presume the advice given in the links below has come about as a result of scientific evidence. I might be wrong though? Let me know what you think.

http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/agesandstages/children/yrtoddler/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6983017.stm

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/startingsolids/saltexpert/

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/toddler/nutrition/howtofeed/

http://www.hpherts.nhs.uk/Documents/Nutrition/Primary%20Care%20nutrition%20leaflets/Children/How%20much%20salt%20children%20CNES.pdf

The main concern seems to be be a potential rise in blood pressure from additional salt intake. 

Please note: I did a Google search for 'salt and toddlers' and these were the first five results to show up. I am Googling from the UK so if repeat the search your results might be different depending on what country you are searching from.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeteMcCracken 

OK, what Google search terms do you suggest? The ones I've tried result in a vary mixed bag of hearsay and opinion with what little scientific reports available show little adverse effects.
 

Hi

I used 'salt and toddlers' as the search phrase. In my response to boar_d_laze (see above) I stated that the main concern seems to be a potential rise in blood pressure if extra salt is added to young children's food. I have added the links below if you would like to have a look.

Would it be possible to point me in the direction of the results that you found were a 'mixed bag of hearsay and opinion'? It would be quite interesting to have a look. Anyway here are the links.

http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/agesandstages/children/yrtoddler/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6983017.stm

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/startingsolids/saltexpert/

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/toddler/nutrition/howtofeed/

http://www.hpherts.nhs.uk/Documents/Nutrition/Primary%20Care%20nutrition%20leaflets/Children/How%20much%20salt%20children%20CNES.pdf

I cannot remember the specific search terms, however, the list included the ones you listed.

Interestingly, all of the sites you cited are based in the UK and I could not locate any corresponding information from anywhere outside the UK.

I'll keep looking...

Oh, BTW, the last cite is at least 6 years old, is there nothing more recent?

Just because all of the sources are from UK and one of the items is over 6 years old doesn't make any of it irrelevant.

The evidence is strong so lets just say I am right for now, unless you can show something to the contrary. Yes?

Originally Posted by Onei 

No.  Emphatically no.  The "evidence" you present does not support your contention. 

With the exception of the one limited to infants (included because you're not  reading through?), they ALL suggest 2g (>3/4tsp table salt) of salt a day is fine for a toddler.

By itself, that suggests "a bit of extra salt" is not a problem. 

But more importantly, that 2 grams is a "maximum daily allowance," not a one-time absolute maximum.  NOT ONE of your sources suggest a child who happens to have twice that amount on occasion will suffer any ill effects at all. 

Also, the 2gm allowance needs to be understood within the context of the rather limited total quantity of food most toddlers eat.  It's also worth pointing out that despite the way the charts in your links are organized there's a world of difference between a 1 year old and a 3 year old, and between individual toddlers as well.

By the way, the NHS pdf file puts the salt limits in better context than the other links -- although still written down to the lowest common denominator and less than fully informative.  The NHS preaches that your child diet's should eschew very salty foods.  But they also say that toddlers "should start to eat the same foods as the rest of the family." 

Furthermore, and perhaps more important their argument against salt is that "too much salt" is a learned behavior and tends to lead towards hyper-tension and susceptibility to strokes down the road.  While they don't want you to teach your very young child to look forward to salty snacks, as I wrote earlier the NHS document neither says nor implies that a "bit of extra salt" is harmful.

QED.

I respect your right to control your own child's diet.  If you want to keep as much salt as possible out of it -- fine.  However, your statements are contraverted by the very evidence you brought forth.

BDL

Let them drink wine, its healthier then soda pop

Alcohol left in food after cooking!

This information was initially established by FDA research; a study was subsequently published in the April 1992 edition of the Journal of the American Dietetic
Association (JADA). The citation is on PubMed, but  the JADA issues prior to 1993 are not available online. Library citation is:  J Am Diet Assoc. 1992 Apr;92(4):486-8. The authors are: Augustin J, Augustin E, Cutrufelli RL, Hagen SR, Teitzel C. [Department of Food Science and Toxicology, Food Research Center, Moscow, ID 83843.]


 Cooking With Alcohol

 Q. When cooking with beer or alcohol, does all of the alcohol evaporate?
 
 A. No. The following chart should be helpful.

I may be wrong, but i doubt all of those numbers.