Can an 8-month-old baby drink honey water? Is it okay to give candy to a crying baby?

Sweet taste is the favorite of many children, but candies, drinks, and other sweets are generally rich in artificial additives. Therefore, these foods may cause the baby's emotional instability, irritability, or hyperactivity. Doctors tell us parents that we should try to avoid letting babies eat sweets, so as to block the bad factors that affect the baby's brain development.

Many dads, moms or elders at home habitually use sweets as a tool to comfort their babies whenever they cry or act like a spoiled child, such as candy, biscuits, chocolate, soft candy, jelly, pudding, Yakult, juice, soda, milk tea, etc. This may unknowingly develop a habit of the baby loving sweets and drinking beverages. Dr. Wu Hanmeng pointed out that this habit will have many negative effects on the baby.

Unable to eat regular meals: Giving babies sweets at the wrong time will only make them feel full and unable to eat normal meals or drink milk. The Ministry of Health and Welfare recommends that the nutritional value of food should be considered first when choosing food, and attention should be paid to the balanced absorption of the five major nutrients - protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. However, if they only eat snacks, it is equivalent to eating only processed sugar and artificial additives such as food coloring, but the fats and vitamins that they originally need are not eaten, resulting in nutritional imbalance.

Hyperactivity and emotional instability: The biggest difference between babies and adults is that their bones, muscles and brains are all in a state of development. When carbohydrates are metabolized by the human body, they must rely on vitamins. Once the body does not have enough vitamins and consumes too much sugar, carbohydrates will not be completely oxidized during metabolism, causing lactic acid and other metabolites to accumulate in various parts of the body. If they accumulate in the baby's brain, it will cause the baby to be hyperactive and emotionally unstable. Studies have also found that many snacks contain caffeine. If young children consume too much, it will excite the central nervous system and easily cause anxiety and other symptoms.

Inattention: Eating a small amount of sweets can make people feel temporarily happy, but high-sugar foods such as cakes and drinks are all monosaccharides, which are quickly absorbed into the body and therefore have low energy sustainability. When children eat too much, it will affect the brain's endurance, making them drowsy and affecting their concentration and learning ability.

Honey has high nutritional value, but it is easily contaminated by botulinum toxin during the brewing and transportation process. This is because bees may bring back pollen and nectar that have been contaminated by botulinum toxin during the pollen collection process. In addition, botulinum toxin spores have strong adaptability and can survive at high temperatures of 100 degrees Celsius. Babies have incompletely developed gastrointestinal tracts, insufficient intestinal acidity and probiotic flora, and are unable to resist botulinum toxin spores. Feeding babies with honey may cause botulinum toxin infection. When botulinum toxin releases botulinum toxin, it can inhibit muscle and gastrointestinal contractions in severe cases, causing constipation, respiratory arrest, general paralysis, and even death. Therefore, it is not recommended for babies under 1 year old to eat honey.