Dietary Protein Quality in Infants and Children

Abstract

AS INTEREST increases in the worldwide problem of malnutrition in infants and preschool children, it becomes ever more apparent that the basic problem is the lack of a proper substitute for human breast milk and that the age at which infants are weaned determines the type of malnutrition encountered.¹ If unlimited amounts of whole cow's milk could be made available in a safe form to the millions of undernourished children of the world, there would be little need to contemplate other substitutes. Unfortunately, the supply of this most valuable of foods is limited and difficult to increase; its cost of production places it beyond the reach of most impoverished people and the problems involved in protecting it from contamination remain an important barrier to its use in primitive environments. In recent years considerable effort is being devoted to the study of possible substitutes for milk protein, many of them