To think veganism is not for children?

[ohhhhlivia]

Yes, I am aware that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy vegan diet at any age. I know that.

However, it is more difficult and easier to get wrong if you want to be vegan. It still is restrictive (even with all of the new stuff coming out) as in you need to tell hosts, check menus in advance etc.

It's a barrier that has to be overcome. I don't understand why you would do that to someone who has no choice in the matter.

Lots of kids go through a fussy phase too, add veganism in and surely you're at a high risk of health problems?

I think what I'm getting at, is that childhood nutrition can be hard enough as it is, so it just feels wrong to make it harder for reasons that do not directly benefit the child.

@SonjaMorgan breast milk isn't the 'real' milk. It is human milk.

Milk is a nutrient-rich, white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for infant mammals before they are able to digest other types of food.

Cows milk contains sugar and fat too. And is very often fortified.

It depends entirely on the child and the parents. My kids would struggle nutritionally - or two of them would but i have relatives brought up vegan from birth - WFPB and they're some of the healthiest adults you'll meet. They glowed with health as kids too whereas my brother and i were pasty on junk food. There's no single answer to this question its entirely subjective.

It's not ideal unless you are a very good cook and knowledgeable about nutrition. Extended breastfeeding is a must too - my vegan friend fed until school age (US school age - 5!)

The problem is that no human can be vegan without supplements because of b12. I'm deficient despite eating meat and eggs in fact.

That said if you can do it well then it's personal choice

Animal cruelty is not for anyone, regardless of their age.

Your ignorant speciesist question assumes that eating corpses or animal secretions is somehow healthy or ok. It isn’t.

Presumably the people who think it's wrong to give children anything containing artificial supplements wouldn't give a bowl of weetabix, or anything made with white flour?

@Endspeciesism

Animal cruelty is not for anyone, regardless of their age.

Your ignorant speciesist question assumes that eating corpses or animal secretions is somehow healthy or ok. It isn’t.

What about non human animals who eat other non human animals?

Vegans who do it properly are fine, they're eating their own bodyweight in beans and pulses which is way better than the shit I give my kids. I frequently serve up pasta cheese and ketchup and call it a meal

It would obviously be a problem if the vegan parent in question ate nothing but pasta because chances are the children would be malnourished.

I don't understand why you would do that to someone who has no choice in the matter

The reason vegans often give their children a vegan diet is because they believe it is healthier.

It is the diet they follow because they believe it is the best way to live, so why would they choose to give their children a diet that they believe to be substandard?

To understand it, OP, you have to be open to the idea that vegan parents believe their diet is healthier - they're not approaching this from your viewpoint that a vegan diet is too restrictive, so their view of what is best for their child is different from yours.

It's like religion - it's all very well saying it's not fair to bring children up in a certain faith, but if those parents genuinely believe it's better for their children to be raised in a certain faith, they will obviously raise them in that faith as they think it's for the best.

You know many animal products only contain B12 Because the animals are fed supplements right? B12 comes from soil but with intensive farming some animals don’t see much of the outdoors and do don’t get it naturally to pass onto us. We also used to get it from eating plants but now everything is washed to within an inch of its life so no more B12. It’s easy to supplement either by taking B12 or eating fortified foods such as plant milk, cereal, marmite and nutritional yeast.

@namechange46 I just find it ironic that stork is being put forward as a more ethical choice than butter, for a child at least, I don't care what adults choose to eat.

One kid I know gets skittles instead of chocolate due to veganism, I just find it all a bit upside down personally.

It's such a non argument to say children should be able to choose and parents shouldn't inflict their views on them.

Feeding children cooked dead corpses is a choice parents make for their children and very often with no education about the provenance of the fish finger etc.

I don't even have young children rainingallday so nope, not defensiveness from me! You're making yourself look ridiculous, repeatedly saying you would report to SS. You having a problem with something doesn't mean that it's an actual problem. Which part of that aren't you getting?!

Depends on your reason for being vegan too. Soy is a tricky one because huge swathes of the Amazon have been cleared to farm soybeans. Not as much land as has been cleared for cattle ranches, but still a significant number.

DH and I are both from science backgrounds and ditched dairy two years ago because, honestly, omnivorous diets are ruining our planet. If everybody cut their animal products consumption by just a third it would have such a huge effect on the environment.

Purple yep I agree. B12 doesn't actually come from meat. The animal is the middleman so to speak. Factory farmed animals have to be given a b12 supplement as they never get to graze naturally. The whole farming system is fucked up and incredibly cruel.

@formerbabe I looked up phytoacids and beans & the only potential problem listed was that it can decrease iron absorption. My nurse friend is always banging on about how maybe my son and I (vegetarians) probably don’t get enough iron. We do, I know this because when I was pregnant they were constantly doing blood tests on me, also when I was in the hospital for surgery, and the tests have never come back as deficient in iron at all, in fact bean-eating iron levels are quite high.

And obviously non-human mammals who are carnivores don’t have the potential to ethically think through “hmm, should I eat this antelope? Nah, that’d be cruel.” As humans we can think through whether or not it’s right to take the life of a sentient being for the sake of our taste-buds.

*This is the third anti-vegan thread started in the past couple of days.

What gives?*

The meat/dairy industry are starting to get rattled. 🤷🏻‍♀️Look at the fuss the new Tesco's advert has caused 😂

@orangeteal that doesn’t make any sense about not eating chocolate due to veganism. Not eating mil chocolate, sure, but dark chocolate contains no animal products. My kids grew up eating dark chocolate so found milk chocolate too sweet. Kids eat, and enjoy, the flavour palette they’re used to eating.

Nobody has answered the OP.....

Jains have traditionally eaten dairy. Only recently have some started to avoid it due to factory farming.

So no, we don't have generations of healthy vegans begetting more healthy vegans.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just pointing out that it hasn't really happened yet.

Yet feeding children bits of flesh from a dead animal is totally acceptable. Bollocks to that.

Your ignorant speciesist question assumes that eating corpses or animal secretions is somehow healthy or ok. It isn’t.

Oh FFS.

'Eating corpses and animal secretions' is what humans have been doing for millenia. It's how we got here. It's how you came to be here lecturing people how bad it is to eat corpses and animal secretions. It's what many people around the world have to still do now in order to survive.

I'm not against people bringing up their children vegan from birth. I know someone who does it and I know she is very careful about nutrititon.

I would say that a diet that needs artifical supplements just to provide the basics because you can't get them from the food you are eating probably isn't natural or healthy, but luckily in our privileged Western society we can get away with it.

And oat milk definitely isn't 'milk'.

I think its fine at home if parents think about nutrition.

But mean to tell the kids they can't have cake or chocolate at parties etc because it might include eggs or dairy products. Let the kids decide for themselves whether they want it full time, but it's fine at home.

I also think that being a vegan is not necessarily good for the planet if you transport your alternatives half way across the globe, when you could get eggs from he farm down the road.

So not so sure it's that great an example to set. Bring the kids up vegetarian and let them decide when they're older if they want to take it further to veganism.