Veganuary is upon us. Everywhere I look there’s plant-based ‘meats’ and oat milk. The other morning, there was a mother on a talk show, discussing the benefits of raising her son as a vegan. Nobody batted an eyelid, but is it healthy for a child to be vegan?
Childhood is an incredibly important time for development. Essential nutrients like vitamin B12 and DHA are essential for children’s bodies and brains and are only found in meat. A vegan diet is deficient and can lead to serious health implications such as physical disabilities and mental illness.
Is it healthy for a child to be vegan?
Veganism is always a hot topic in the media, and it’s all by their design. It’s the classic “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” The movement, as with all the anti-establishment movements, makes a lot of effort to be vocal. For the majority of vegans this does come from a place of genuine capacity. In their eyes, they need to be louder than the mainstream to be able to spread their message to a society where, until not long ago, veganism was seen as extreme.
What is a vegan diet?
A vegan (or plant-only) diet is one completely devoid of animal products. Instead of relying on meat, dairy and other foods from animals, vegans rely on grains, legumes, vegetables and fruit aswell as other plants. The diet itself is usually attached to an overall ideology that excludes using animals in any way. This includes clothing, transport and sport among others.
Reasons people go vegan
The diet itself usually falls out of a desire to limit suffering on animals by refusing to eat the animal itself or any products that come from them. They believe that by removing the products from their diet, they limit the impact of suffering faced by livestock. Though there are other reasons that people steer clear of meat, this is the main focus for a real vegan diet.
Plant-only diets have received a lot of attention in recent years for alleged health benefits. They’re associated with everything from more energy and lower body fat, to better sexual performance and regression of diseases.
Sounds great doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, things aren’t quite as simple as filling your family’s fridge with soy milk. Huge sugar and cereal corporations and lobbies have been demonising meat since at least the late 19th Century, when John Kellogg (of Kellogg cereal) promoted a bland vegetarian diet to reduce masterbation urge. Apparently, meat “excited the passions” too much for the religious, anti-sex fanatic who mutilated young boys and girls(1).
Basically, there’s very little that you can trust in the nutrition world. It’s been proven that whatever side you represent, you can find studies- valid or not- to back your argument up. I’m not a scientist. I’m a Dad looking to give my son the best start in life. So I look at how humans are designed, and what is lacking in a vegan diet that is essential for children to properly develop.
What does a vegan child miss out on?
In our previous post, we outlined 7 things that a vegan child lacks. It’s vital for parents to know, because childhood and adolescence is such a critical time for growth and development. A deficiency in early years can have catastrophic and lasting effects on your child. The 7 things that they lack are:
- Collagen
- Saturated Fat
- Vitamin B12
- Vitamin D
- DHA
- Zinc
- The Truth
Read the whole article: “7 reasons to avoid Veganuary: what a vegan child lacks” here.
Consequences of a vegan diet
Deficiencies in the list above can cause irreversible damage throughout the body. Childhood is a time of rapid learning and growth and what they take in is what makes them who they are. Children raised as vegans may not achieve ideal brain development which can lead to lower IQ, worse social capacity and mental health issues(2).
There has been a link associated between a vegan diet in children and shorter height. Compared to meat-eaters, they also had 5% lower bone mineral content. This is worrying due to the fact that 95% of your child’s bone mass is fixed by the time they reach 20 (3). These deficiencies are exacerbated by anti nutrients derived from some plants that inhibit the absorption of certain nutrients like zinc and calcium. So even if, theoretically, you have planned your child’s diet so that they get enough nutrients, this can cause them to suffer from deficiencies.
To make up for a lack of nutrition, vegan children are often given supplements for things like vitamin B12 and vitamin D. Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as filling a child with artificial supplements and thinking their body is fine with it. The supplements used are often made up of unhealthy or toxic ingredients(4).
Read here to learn how to boost your son’s brain with meat
What foods to focus on instead
Human beings probably became as successful as we did because we are adaptive enough to be able to consume animals and plants. Before 2 million years ago, other human species’ ate meat opportunistically and not as a staple part of their diet(). Since then, we developed to become extremely effective hunters. By the time bipedal, hairless and super intelligent Homo Sapiens (us) came along, we relied on meat as our primary source of food.
To this end, the foods to ensure you feed your child are the same as they have been for thousands of years: grass-fed meat; wild seafood; associated fats and organs; and dairy. I’m not advocating for a carnivore diet for your child. Due to the lack of reliability in nutritional studies, I don’t see the need to force a strict diet on children. However, I want to emphasise the need to include these natural foods in their diet, in a society where they are increasingly demonised. The nutrients they get from these human-specific foods a will improve their overall development and they’ll end up happier and healthier.
Read here to learn how to make your sone unstoppable with red meat
Summary
A vegan diet lacks many key nutrients that a child needs for proper development.
Deficiencies in meat-based nutrients are linked to physical and psychological problems that can have irreversible damage.
Simply topping up a deficient child with supplements can do more harm than good. Most vitamin supplements contain inflammatory products, and some contain toxic aldehydes. Always choose real food! If you have to supplement to make a diet sustainable, then it isn’t sustainable.
Choose animals that are fed on their natural diet, like grass-fed cows and sheep. The grains that are terrible for us, are also terrible for them.
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