Balanced solid foods – the basis for gut health
The move from breast milk or formula to follow-on formula and solid foods has an important influence on the composition of microbiota in small children. In some circumstances this transition phase can have a life-long impact on the health of the child's microbiota. A balanced diet creates a good basis for developing health microbiota.
For children and adults, a healthy diet should be as varied and natural as possible. This ensures the sufficient supply of all essential nutrients, which also includes prebiotics in its widest sense.
A healthy diet also means keeping foods with unnecessary added sugar to a minimum. Not all types of sugar have a prebiotic effect. The important types of sugar for gut bacteria are contained in whole-grain products, fruit, vegetables and nuts.
Kids’ Food from HOCHDORF – healthy and practical
Freshly prepared meals and healthy snacks are best for our children. However, sometimes there is simply no time for chopping and cooking. Now there are ways to provide small children with healthy fibre – and therefore prebiotics – when time is short.
At HOCHDORF, for example, we offer ingredients for weaning foods based on milk powders that also contain additional cereals, vegetables and fruits, depending on the variety. The products just need to be mixed with warm mater to produce a healthy baby porridge with sufficient prebiotics.
Our products contain everything our little ones need. Our cereal-based crisps and our banana flips are suitable for children over six months. For children over the age of three, we also recommend the fruit and vegetable snacks from HOCHDORF’s newest subsidiary, Zifru Trockenprodukte GmbH. The Zifru products are made using a special drying process: the fruit and vegetables retain the typical, distinctive flavour of their variety with all the nutrition and a unique crispy texture. All the power of nature – concentrated in the Zifru products. They are free from sugar, salt and any other additives.
Our Marbacher Ölmühle division, also based in Germany, offers healthy ingredients for children too. Our organic rapeseed oil is excellent for preparing the first solid foods. Healthy nutrition for small children doesn't stop at home – it is possible anywhere.
We offer solutions that meet today's nutritional trends and lifestyle – healthy nutrition wherever and whenever we want.
Prebiotics – a delicacy for healthy gut bacteria
Prebiotics are indigestible, fermentable polysaccharides and oligosaccharides or carbohydrates that are made up of several monosaccharides (simple sugars) which can be the same or different. Prebiotics are the nutritional basis for healthy gut bacteria. Bifidobacteria, which inhabit the gut in larger numbers, prefer oligosaccharides.
Breast milk contains many water soluble oligosaccharides so it make sense to use an infant or follow-on formula enriched with oligosaccharides like GOS and FOS. GOS are galacto-oligosaccharides which are produced from lactose with the help of enzymes. FOS are fructooligosaccharides, which are derived from plants.
Fermentable polysaccharides and oligosaccharides are mainly found in oats, barley, fruit and vegetables.