Eat your eggs!

Oh, what the heck, The Care and Feeding of Children is such a treasure trove, you can pretty much open it to any page and find great wisdom.

To what extent may eggs be used in the diet of this period (4 to 10 years)?
They form a most valuable food. It is important that they should be fresh, and only slightly cooked ... fried eggs should not be given, and most omelets are objectionable. The finely grated yolk of a hard-boiled egg may be given with advantage to many infants even as young as five or six months.

similarly ...

What are te important points to be considered in giving meat to children?
Most meats should be rare.

...

Are not gravies beneficial and nutririous? The beef juice from a roast is exceedingly nutritious and desirable.

On vegetables: "The principal trouble in the digestion of vegetables is due to imperfect cooking. It is, in fact, almost impossible to cook them too much.

All that from three pages I randomly opened to. Good stuff. You read it folks, straight from a doctor: give your baby undercooked eggs and meat and cook those veggies until they're a tasteless mash. Yum.

So you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics says egg yolks are OK, but they're not as good a source of iron as previously believed -- iron-fortified cereals and such are better and safer (less Salmonella risk). As for meats, cook fully to kill bacteria is a good rule of thumb for those without fully developed immune systems.

OK -- it's 7:49 (despite whenever blogger.com says I'm posting this ... are they on Greenwich Mean Time or something?), so it's time to push off for the hospital soon.