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by adrianN 796 days ago
A baby's digestive system is not set up to digest sugars other than lactose for the first few months.
2 comments

It's maltodextrin and designed to be digestible by babies. You can buy it in a fine powder marketed as "Caloreen" from Nestlé.

Our pediatrician pushed us to use it in supplement to breast-feeding because the baby was below the expected curve. For what it's worth (not much), our baby that was fed Caloreen has no sugar addiction, quite the contrary.

Knowing our pediatrician, I am 99.9% sure that he didn't have any incentive from Nestlé and was just having the baby interest in mind. I am rather blaming the weight curves that are more designed for bottle-fed babies than breast-fed ones, combined with the human tendency to focus on the indicators rather than what they represent.

article says it's sucrose or honey, not maltodextrin
Genuinely asking, is that true? Sugar or sucrose is a combination of glucose and fructose that can be broken down by water, since glucose is the basic sugar that cell uses wouldn't that be available regardless of the baby's digestive system?
Fructose is metabolized very differently from galactose. Babies also don't have a fully formed gut microbiota. Introducing carbohydrates other than lactose too early can mess that up.