Infants and young children in rapid growth development period need enough energy to satisfy basic metabolism and growth. In this stage the baby needs protein, fat, carbohydrates, and other various nutrient more than adults. The most common carbohydrates in enfant food such as maltodextrin, sucrose, lactose provide similar energy. Lactose is natural in mammals, which is digested by lactase in the gut. However, activity of the lactase declines as ages increase. Maltodextrin and cane sugar are used as main source of carbohydrates.
Sugar is a kind of disaccharides which is digested into fructose and glucose in digestive system and absorbed by intestine . As too much sugar is easy to cause tooth decay, due to their high sweetness, sucrose from is easier for babies to get into bad habit of preference for sweets.
Maltodextrin is similar to corn syrup, a nutritional polysaccharide without smell. It has many special physical and chemical properties such as good solubility in water, boiling resistance and easy absorption in human body. To provide energy in infant and young child nutrition, maltodextrin and other types of carbohydrates and no, or are equivalent.At present abroad also add malt dextrin in food, improve nutrition matching, easy digestion and absorption.Malt dextrin in the compound function of milk powder, especially without the role of sugar such as milk powder, infant feeding milk powder has been confirmed.
In theory, maltodextrin under total amount of carbohydrate will not affect proportion of other nutrients. From perspective of nutriology, it is baby’s nutritional meal if you balance protein, fat and carbohydrates.