Feeding of Children
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Testimonies for the Church 4:502
Your children should not be allowed to eat candies, fruit, nuts, or
anything in the line of food, between their meals. Two meals a day
are better for them than three. If the parents set the example, and
move from principle, the children will soon fall into line. Irregularities
in eating destroy the healthy tone of the digestive organs, and when
your children come to the table, they do not relish wholesome food;
their appetites crave that which is the most hurtful for them. Many
times your children have suffered from fever and ague brought on
by improper eating, when their parents were accountable for their
sickness. It is the duty of parents to see that their children form habits
conducive to health, thereby saving much distress.
The Health Reformer, September 1, 1866 (Healthful Living, 145)
Children are also fed too frequently, which produces feverishness
and suffering in various ways. The stomach should not be kept con-
stantly at work, but should have its periods of rest. Without it children
will be peevish and irritable and frequently sick.
Testimonies for the Church 3:567-568
Will mothers of this generation feel the sacredness of their mission,
and not try to vie with their wealthy neighbors in appearances, but
seek to excel them in faithfully performing the work of instructing
their children for the better life? If children and youth were trained
and educated to habits of self-denial and self-control, if they were
taught that they eat to live instead of living to eat, there would be less
disease and less moral corruption. There would be little necessity
for temperance crusades, which amount to so little, if in the youth
who form and fashion society, right principles in regard to temperance
could be implanted. They would then have moral worth and moral
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integrity to resist, in the strength of Jesus, the pollutions of these
last days Parents may have transmitted to their children tendencies
to appetite and passion, which will make more difficult the work of
educating and training these children to be strictly temperate, and to
have pure and virtuous habits. If the appetite for unhealthy food and
for stimulants and narcotics, has been transmitted to them as a legacy
from their parents, what a fearfully solemn responsibility rests upon