Has anyone been vegan from birth?

[UpsideRound]

Idle curiosity only

Not people who were vegetarian but went vegan/ tried it but was sick etc or decided at 2... but raised from birth by vegan parents with the intention of raising a vegan child.

A few of my friends are doing this (kids seem normal/ happy...) but I’m just a little nosey how those adults raised as vegan children reacted in their teens/ young adulthood. Did you keep to it always? Try a new diet when you left home? Rebel from it then return or give it up? Was it always positive/ neutral or at times restrictive? Some of the kids certainly embrace it, some don’t comment, but one I know openly hates the rules.

In my teens I certainly did the opposite at times (including a long stint as a vegetarian in a meat focused household).

Hi @UpsideRound, we're just giving this thread a bump to get it back into Active Conversations.

Not vegan but I brought my two older children up as vegetarian and they are both now adults.

One now eats meat but not a huge amount and the other is nearly 30 and is still vegetarian with limited dairy.

They always had a choice to try meat if they wanted as long as they were old enough to make the decision as to what it was. I think the now meat eater was a little nervous of telling her dad though at the time.

I have remarried (to a meat eater) and had two more children who both eat meat although the youngest often talks about going veggie (then he promptly goes and eats something meat based so I don't think he's entirely serious about it)

I have friends who were brought up vegetarian (many round here for religious or cultural reasons as well as animal welfare), we ate meat rarely ourselves

I was wondering about being vegan from birth, and how it was in the 80s/ 90s and if the stricter restrictions were different. For example if we had a pizza party it was normal to only have cheese pizzas so everyone could eat it, my if I’m honest I imagine then many parents wouldn’t have made effort for a vegan option.

Thank you btw @JoMumsnet

I was a vegetarian as a child (my own choice, my parents ate meat, I was veg for 20 years but then went back to eating meat as I found my body couldn’t do so many carbs as I got older). I remember when I first went veg, very early 90s, there was little to no distinction between being vegetarian or vegan. So unless someone had an allergy to eggs or dairy and was also vegetarian, I think there would be few people old enough now to have been raised vegan from birth at that time.

I did know some people who were macrobiotic (which is mostly but not exclusively vegan). But veganism really only became mainstream in the 00s.

@UpsideRound

Yes I imagine vegan would have been much harder then. I tried being vegan in the early 90s and it was much more difficult than now, definitely.

To be honest even having my children as vegetarian was often seen as weird in the early 90s.

They would often have to be catered for separately at parties. The option would usually mean cheese for instance instead of a ham sandwich so I think vegan would have been a real step too far for some people to figure out.

I was often questioned about 'forcing' them into a way of life but I always felt that I was just giving them a healthy diet and they had the option of adding meat in later if they chose to.
I suppose vegans feel the same?

My vegetarian daughter likes that she hasn't ever eaten meat. She didn't have to make that choice as an adult. It was the default position. Maybe the same for vegans who have been from birth?

@mindutopia

I agree that due to veganism not being quite so prevalent then that there may not be a huge amount of adults now who were raised vegan as opposed to common or garden vegetarian.

That may change though with the rise and awareness of veganism

I would imagine that it's very hard to raise a child as vegan from birth but that as it gets more common among adults it will become easier and more common among children. I would think that you'd have to pay a lot of attention to what you feed a child to ensure adequate nutrition but how many children are being raised on diets of processed food and garbage and we don't seem to worry too much about that? It wouldn't be my choice but I think that there are worse things to do to a child!

Thanks, that interesting.

I know a fair few vegan children (around 10 or more) so I presumed it was maybe more common but I hadn’t been exposed to it.