Infant Feeding Practices, 1966

Abstract

OUR INTEREST in dietary sodium was greatly stimulated by the surprising observation that an infant we were studying was ingesting 50-60 mEq of sodium daily from a diet of homogenized milk and commercial baby food. The patient, aged 15 months, was in chronic cardiac failure due to coarctation of the aorta. After a review of the literature, it was apparent that there was little published data as to the "normal" sodium intake of infants being fed modern diets. There are no recommendations as to optimum dietary sodium for infants by the National Research Council of the United States¹ or in the Canadian Dietary Standards.² The purposes of this report then are: (1) describe the results of a laboratory survey of the sodium contents of the diet of infants in the Well Baby Clinic at Vanderbilt University Hospital, and (2) to question the soundness of sodium levels of currently