So spinach is bad for young children, but how young is young?

Question

I've been trying to find out at what age is eating spinach ok or alot less bad for you. From my research I have found out why spinach is bad for young children; oxalic acid, and nitrites. Oxalic acid is bad because it stunts growth, and nitrites because it is a poison that results after reheating spinach leftovers. For those of you concerned nitrites are only slightly poisonous. Nitrites won't harm adults, unless a lot, and I mean a lot of reheated spinach is consumed. All the sites I found said that spinach is only bad for young children. They didn't say how young is young, that's why I want to know. One site I found said that nitrites can be dangerous for children 6 months and younger. That’s the only source I found that mentioned any precise age. Only having one source saying that age, is not enough for me. If anyone else knows more about this please include your source/s. Thank you. ^_^

Answer 1

I would not worry over a small amount of cooked spinach after a year old. By the way people with kidney disease should take it easy with high oxalic acid products, and the highest source of nitrites is cured meat (ham, bacon, hot dogs).

Answer 2

I'd agree with Sarah. Most parents I know of who had children with severe constipation issues eventually discovered that their children had a food allergy or intolerance. Dairy and soy seem are the two I hear the most on. Most doctors say that kids almost never have food issues. But in my experience, that's because medical school teaches them this, so they rarely suggest testing kids for food allergies or intolerances. Which results many times in kids having years of tummy issues before their parents figure out what's wrong. And the doctors continue on with their idea that tummy issues almost never happen, sadly, because they never saw the resolution of the original problem. :-( There is one problem if this is a food issue: there are NO tests for most food intolerances other than eliminating the food and seeing if there is a positive change to the diet. Food allergy tests for mild (non-anaphylactic) food allergies have about a 50% accuracy. Problems with false negatives AND false positives abound. So it's very tricky to diagnose these types of things. First thing I would do is try to think back and see if you introduced anything to her diet up to a week or two before the constipation started. New food, new vitamins, changed formula maybe? It's easier, if a new food is the culprit. The hard part is if she's developed an intolerance or allergy to a food that she eats all the time. Hypo-allergenic formula's can help, if she gets formula. If you breastfeed, I would think about dropping the 8 major allergens from your diet and seeing if that may be of some use with her symptoms. Or see if you can feed her while avoiding one food at a time in her diet, to see if she feels better. And if you know of a food allergist you feel like you can trust, that might be worth seeing, too. To help in the interim, you might want to look at glycerin suppositories for small children. I am not sure they are okay for an infant this small - the label would say, I assume. But this would help at the back end, as it were, to lubricate things up and help her pass without so much pain, poor little thing.