Noodles have quickly become the staple food of the present. When parents are short on time, and their children need something to eat, they readily opt for instant noodles. Nowadays, with a variety of instant noodle brands, it has become so easy to purchase a flavour your child loves. But, you do need to stop and think if noodles is the right food for your child. And, we shall discuss just that in this article. Let’s first understand if noodles is safe for babies and infants.
Noodles is a type of pasta made with dough. Homemade noodles is eaten as a staple in several parts of the world and is safe to consume as it does not have chemicals and preservatives. But, the ones that you get in the market, including instant noodles, have chemicals and preservatives that do not make it a great choice for children. Any sort of noodles, whether homemade or market-bought, are not safe for infants as they would choke on it. For older kids, you may want to stick to healthier options and avoid instant noodles. Let’s take a look at why noodles/ instant noodles are unsafe for your little one.
Here are some more reasons why instant noodles isn’t good for your little one.
Primarily made out of maida, instant noodles are processed for packaging, and contain no/ extremely low nutritional value. Such food items are also termed as empty calorie consumables.
Noodles is steamed and then deep-fried in oil to extend its shelf life. This leads to trans fats from the oil to become a part of the noodles, leading to weight gain in your child.
Noodles need to look attractive, and that is achieved by coating them with a layer of wax in the manufacturing process. Wax is quite harmful to children and is known to cause damage to the liver.
Noodles cannot be dry and need to retain their internal moisture. This is attained by adding propylene glycol to them. Kids are at a higher risk with this chemical since it causes long-term damage to the heart, liver and the kidneys by accumulating in them.
MSG, as it was famously abbreviated and reported in the news, is widely used in instant noodles for a very important reason. It highly enhances the flavour. However, this chemical is harmful to children as well as adults, since it is known to lead to brain damage.
Noodles already contain salt in high amounts to preserve them for long durations. Sodium, the element present in salt, also directly affects the vital organs and can cause damage when consumed excessively.
Apart from the aforementioned reasons, various chemicals such as plasticisers and dioxin are present in the material used for packaging noodles. These chemicals are carcinogenic and might remain in the noodles even after you cook it. One may assume that their quantity of consumption isn’t high or that they take care while cooking, but certain factors which can cause cancer are not a risk worth taking.
Sometimes, even after knowing that noodles, especially instant noodles, are not safe for babies, you might find yourself with nothing but a pack of instant noodles. And, when your little one cannot control his hunger, you might have to feed it to him. But, there are ways you can make it a little safer for your child.
As tasty as various noodle recipes for kids might be, after knowing about their harmful nature, one needs to be more careful before directly serving them to your children. Here’s what you can do to make it a tad bit less harmful than it was before. Having said that, we recommend you avoid feeding noodles to your kids completely.
If you are convinced that noodles is an unhealthy snack for you kid, you may want to keep enough alternatives to satisfy his hunger and get his mind off instant noodles.
Here are some foods you can replace instant noodles with and provide other nutritious snacks to your kid:
There are tons of other alternatives such as soups or other preparations that you can introduce your child to. However, if your child is already hooked on to instant noodles, you can incentivise the serving by limiting the number of times you purchase it and dish it out only on certain occasions.
References: