Baby Talk January 2019

Life & Style
Love For Life
Concerns on the lack of nutrients
There are concerns on the apparent lack of nutrients
in a vegan diet which may affect a child’s growth and
development. For instance, vegan food can be lacking in
vitamin D, calcium, iron and possibly vitamin B12, which
are typically derived from the intake of milk and meat in
normal diets.
A vegan diet also isn't very energy-dense: one would have
to eat a lot of it to get enough energy. Toddlers typically
don't eat a lot, so getting enough calories into them can
be difficult. Some dieticians recommend adding some good
vegetable oil to their food.
Another downside of a vegan diet is the lack of protein. A
child who is fed with meat and fish would easily get all the
right amino acids compared to a child who is getting protein
from pulses. The problem here is that one type of bean might
not provide every amino acid, so there has to be a good
balance of pulses which the little one has to consume. In
short, a child will get all the essential amino acids by eating
some chicken meat, but a child who only eats one type of
bean won't.
Be fully informed
Like any other alternative diet practiced in the world,
information and knowledge are the keys to ensure that you’ll
be getting all the right nutrients. Needless to say, parents
raising their offspring on a vegan diet have to be adequately
informed on their child’s nutritional needs and how they will
be met, because, when a vegan diet starts to go wrong, or
when one starts to lax and nutritional requirements are not
met, the child will have to suffer the consequences.
The first symptom is usually that the child fails to thrive or
grow properly. This will probably be due to the shortage of
calories and protein that are required for children to thrive.
Rickets might follow, (caused by deficiencies in vitamin D and
calcium). Yes, such are the severities of deficiencies in major
nutrients in a child’s diet.
However, here are the kickers:
While we may have mentioned
all of the above as the possible
downsides of children on a
vegan diet, the fact is, countless
children all over the world today,
who are all on ‘normal’ diets,
suffer the above outcomes too,
and then some! The availability
of fast foods, modern day foodpreparation
methods and the
over-use of poor quality or overly
processed ingredients all add up
to bring about dire consequences
to children’s health and wellbeing.
Now, that’s food for
thought, isn’t it?
And here’s another one..
Vegan families are more likely to cook at home, and are likely
to be very knowledgeable about nutrition because they have
had to make a lot of effort to follow the diet through. Most
of them follow a whole food diet, and avoid trans-fats and
too much salt. It's actually makes it much easier for vegans
and their children to meet the requirements of the food
pyramid than for other people.
Vegan nutrition for babies and
children
Healthy infants can thrive on well-planned vegan
diets. Breast milk is the best food for infants,
but if you cannot breastfeed your baby, use
properly formulated commercial soya infant
formula. Infant formulas are fortified with
vitamin D3. They are safe alternatives to
breast milk. Note: The vitamin D3 is from
lanolin though, a derivative from sheep.
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