Is it good for children to eat cod liver oil?

Doctor Li Xiaoying from Beijing United Family Hospital provides professional support.

Doctor’s Brief Introduction: He graduated from Bethune Medical University with a master’s degree in pediatrics in 2006 and has 11 years of clinical experience in pediatrics. He is good at child health care and diagnosis and treatment of common diseases of children.

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Can children eat cod liver oil? To say whether we can eat it or not, we must first know that cod liver oil is what. Generally speaking, cod liver oil includes real cod liver oil and vitamin AD compound preparation.

The real cod liver oil is fat extracted from the liver of marine fish and is a health product. Its main ingredients are vitamin A and vitamin D, but the content is relatively low, and the ratio of vitamin A to vitamin D is usually 10: 1. This is not suitable for children to eat.

However, sometimes, what people say about [cod liver oil] is actually vitamin AD preparation, which can be given to babies to prevent vitamin A deficiency and vitamin D deficiency. According to the instructions to eat, generally will not be poisoned.

In order to prevent vitamin D deficiency, every baby should eat 400 units of vitamin D every day from 15 days of birth until he is 2 years old.

If it is a premature baby, the amount of supplement is even larger. For the first three months, 800 units need to be supplemented every day. After three months, it will be changed to 400 units until the age of two.

The baby who drinks milk powder, because there is vitamin D in milk powder, AD preparation should eat less. If you can drink 900 milliliters of milk every day, you can not eat AD preparation.

There are two kinds of folk, it is said that we do not advocate vitamin D supplement for babies:

First, some mothers want to eat vitamin D by themselves and then give it to their babies through milk. This is not appropriate, so that mothers have to eat more than 2,000 units before they can give it to their babies. The amount is too large and inappropriate.

Second, vitamin D supplementation in the sun is not recommended, which is inefficient and easy to sunburn babies.

To sum up, real cod liver oil is not suitable for babies, and vitamin AD preparation is suitable for babies.