As an invested parent or grandparent you want to do all you can to help your little tikes thrive and get a great start on life. You know that for yourself, a plant-based diet works well to give you energy, help you minimize aches and pains, recover fast from strenuous activities, and give you a great shot at living a long, healthy life. But what about your little ones? Is a vegan diet good or even sufficient for a little child that is growing fast and developing quickly? Let’s take a look at some recent studies and I’ll weigh in from my own experience of raising 14 children on a plant-based diet as well.
“Well-Planned Plant-Based Diets are Appropriate for All Stages of Life”
First off, “well-planned” vegetarian and vegan diets have been given the green light by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, again and again. They are appropriate for all stages of life, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adults, and athletes. The only caveat is “well-planned.” What’s that?
Defining a “Well-Planned” Diet
What exactly is a “well-planned” diet? Mostly they mean that you aren’t in danger of any deficiencies. For vegans, that means supplementing with vitamin B-12 at the very least. But we could do a bit better than just B-12.
If you make sure you have good intakes of B-12, vitamin D, iodine, and DHA you will cover the main potential holes in the vegan diet. That’s true for kids and adults. Then, if you optimize intakes of vitamin C and magnesium, and also take melatonin (for adults over the age of 50 only), and get a greens supplement like BarleyMax, you have all of your main bases covered. Those eight nutrients have earned the title of the “Elite Eight,” that is 8 essential nutrients that everybody needs to optimize, whether you follow a vegan, raw-food, paleo, or carnivore diet. You can optimize more, but these are the basics to make sure you cover well before trying exotic or specialized supplements.
So, how does that apply to kids? Just make sure they get a supplement for B12, vitamin D, fish oil (or other DHA), and a source of iodine. It’s pretty simple and not expensive either.
Our Experience with Raising 14 Children: It’s Really Simple
Supplements for Kids
Here’s how we did it for our 14 children. Once a week we had our “Sunday vitamins.” These were the B-12 sublingual tablets and the vitamin D in a liquid gel. Once a week delivery, with the right amount of course, takes care of both of these. We gave the kids fish oil every night with dinner, starting with a gel cap when they could chew food. We gave them liquid on a spoon before that. Turns out that lots of kids like to chew fish oil caps. We also gave them vitamin C, about 500 mg for little ones with lunch and dinner, and then 1,000 mg for older kids. And we put a drop per child of Iosol iodine into their morning smoothies, so that helps optimize their iodine intake. Simple, really, once you get used to it. It takes just a little bit of planning.
All Raw? No!
That takes care of supplements. What about food? First off, an all-raw diet is not appropriate for children. At Hallelujah Diet we don’t even recommend the all-raw diet for adults. We recommend about 50 percent raw, by volume, for kids. Raw foods are too bulky and kids lose interest in eating before they get the nutrition they need from more concentrated foods. So, don’t just let them eat fruit and nuts for dinner. That won’t work too well for too long.
Start with Raw Food and Then Let Them Eat Cooked Food till Full
We always start off our meals with raw food, whether it is a fruit/almond smoothie in the morning, or a piece of fruit or cut veggies at lunch, or a green smoothie or traditional salad at dinner. And the kids get a kid-sized portion of the raw food. And then we bring on the rest of the meal. They had their raw fruit or vegetables, and then they eat until their appetite is satisfied with the cooked portion of the meal. It’s pretty simple. A bit of raw food, then cooked food, plant-based, wholesome foods. (Green smoothies are great for getting salad greens into kids that don’t chew well yet.)
27 Years of Feeding Kids this Way Says it Works
Does it work? It works for us, and has done so for over 27 years of feeding kids this way. Kids have energy, do well in school, and don’t have weight issues—either too fat or too skinny. They seem to have strong bones, as broken bones haven’t been too common. Ok, there were a couple of hairline fractures, but not much for 14 active kids. They have become full size adults, and the young men have gone on to building muscles, on their own nutrition program, and have gotten quite strong. They seemed to grow through puberty a little bit slower, but also a little bit longer, too. So, it worked out well, and that seems to be a good thing for lower lifelong cancer risk.
Food Allergies? Not at Our House
Food allergies? Not really. A couple of girls have a reaction to avocados and can’t eat them. A few react a little to loads of grass pollen. But we don’t have food intolerances. It’s not an issue for our kids. That might be partly due to lack of vaccines and a lack of junk food (lots of sugar, bad oils, no fiber, no vegetables) that contributes to leaky gut syndrome.
See, feeding kids isn’t supposed to be that difficult. In a more sane world, kids would just eat food, enjoy it, and then go play, without having any kind of reactions to what they ate. And that should be the same for adults, too. But we have a very sick generation of kids now, and it isn’t supposed to be that way. And for my family, that hasn’t been our experience.
VeChi Diet Study: Results for 1-3 Year Olds
Other people have wondered about this too, including some German researchers. In the VeChi Diet Study they researchers studied 430 children being raised on vegan, vegetarian and omnivorous diets. In their cross-section analysis of 1-3 year olds there were no differences in energy intakes or body size for toddlers. The kids on the omnivorous diet ate a bit more protein, added sugar, and the kids on the vegan diet ate more carbohydrate and fiber, all within a healthy range for these German toddlers.
An examination of the 3-day weighted diet records of these 1-3 year olds showed differences in nutrient intakes. The most favorable micronutrient intake was for the kids eating a vegan diet, with higher vitamin E, B1, folate, magnesium and iron intakes, as well as more polyunsaturated fats rather than saturated fats. The omnivorous diet gave kids a higher intake of vitamin B2, calcium, iodine, and DHA. Without supplementation none of the groups got enough vitamin D or iodine. So, if supplements for B12, vitamin D, iodine, and DHA are given, they will have an overall superior intake of micronutrients and a great balance of macronutrients as well.
VeChi Youth Study: Results for 6-18 Year Olds
The VeChi Youth Study looked at the health outcomes of 6-18 year olds in Germany. There were 149 youth on vegetarian diets, 115 following vegan diets, and 137 eating an omnivorous diet. Energy intake was great for all of the youth, and protein intake was above 0.9 g/kg body weight for all of them, which is adequate. There were a few differences, as expected in folate levels, B12 levels, iron levels, but no differences in hemoglobin, vitamin B2, 25(OH)D3, HDL-cholesterol or triglycerides between groups. All of the groups had kids with low values of vitamin B2 and vitamin D. Overall, eating a vegan or vegetarian diet did not put these kids at risk for nutritional deficiencies. So, there was some supplementation going on to help these kids with B12, which is very important.
Wrapping it Up: You Can Do This!
So, the scientific answer agrees with my experience. Yes, you can raise healthy kids following a vegetarian or vegan diet. Just make sure they get the basic 4 supplements (vitamin B-12, vitamin D, DHA, and iodine) and they will be fine nutritionally speaking. Feed them wholesome plant foods, let them play outside a lot, and let them be kids. Homeschool them if you can, so you can enjoy them more. It’s really simple. Our insane world of micromanaging parents living in dangerous environments lacking creative outlets for play and fun has made raising kids a real chore, and expensive to boot. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s just family life, and family life used to be a lot of fun. And for us, it is. That’s been our experience. And if we can do it with 14, you can do it with your kids, too.
