Vegan baby

[Expecteddeclathon]

In your opinion, is it ok for a baby to be vegan from weaning (6 months)?

After my first vegan pregnancy, I had this debate too and arrived at the opinion that it's perfectly possible but it's harder to do and takes a lot of effort and consideration to make sure they're getting enough iron, B12 etc. and they need a lot of breast milk. We did baby led weaning which was harder I found as a lot of recipes use dairy/eggs to bind stuff together. We ended up with a plant-heavy vegetarian diet but then my DH wasn't vegan so we were already buying those things anyway. As with all parenting stuff, do your best and be prepared to adapt as you go and you'll be alright. Good luck!

Maybe in combination with extended breastfeeding on demand. I would want to be sure to breastfeed until at least age 3. You want to make it until the point the child is old enough to start getting to make choices in their diet. A child of 3 or 4 might be vegan at home, but could start to make different decisions at nursery or reception.

Surely dairy just covers any product that is bottled/made in an actual dairy?

The word dairy has started to sound weird to me now ..

It’s horrible to force it on an infant. Vegetarian is bad enough. Vegan is asking for a whole host of issues.

I definitely wouldn’t give a young child a vegan diet, I also wouldn’t be vegan myself while pregnant or breastfeeding. There are some nutrients that are almost impossible to get in sufficient quantity from a vegan diet and lacking those during the crucial brain development years is absolutely not the best choice for your baby.

If you really want to do this you should consult with a nutritionist about how to offer the best diet possible. Find out whether it’s possible for a young child to take supplements for the things lacking in the vegan diet, or you could make sure to supplement yourself and offer extended breast feeding so the baby gets a top up that way.

So why bother ask on here?

Breastmilk is from an animal OP so not vegan.
Humans are animals.

I’d be very careful around a vegan diet for a young child. Also make sure you’re taking a B12 supplement so baby will get enough in your milk…as vegans are often deficient in this.

No. The issue with drinking milk from another species is not because it's physically produced by that animal but because you're exploiting the animal by taking it. Breastmilk from the mother is intended for the baby and given freely and with consent so it's not against vegan principles.

No, you've misunderstood the principle of veganism. Taking the produce of other animals is exploitation. Giving your baby your own breastmilk is not. Therefore breast milk is vegan and cow's milk is not.

It’s not against vegan principles but that’s different from saying breastmilk itself is a vegan product.

The only thing I would be interested in if I was you would be getting some medical or dietitian advice to ensure I was making a healthy decision for my child and was properly equipped to ensure they got all the nutrients they need.

People will always judge your parenting choices (just as it sounds like you would judge a vegan who raised a non vegan baby) but as long as you are raising a healthy child, let them judge. You do need to ensure that your child will be healthy however, which is where specialist advice should come in.

My friends little girl was. She was dairy free due to allergies dairy/milk allergy and the family are vegetarian so she was vegan until until turned one then they did the milk ladder so at 2.5 she has cheese but still doesn’t have cows milk. She had oat or soya milk if she had an alternative to breast milk.

It's really not. Breast milk is vegan. It's produced for the baby, it doesn't come from an animal that is not the baby's mother.
Vegan doesn't simply mean not produced by an animal.

Absolutely not. Look up the cases where parents have been charged with neglect as their babies were malnourished because the parents fed them a vegan diet. Also, if you deprive a child of meat and dairy, their body doesn't make the enzymes to digest them and you, essentially, make it very difficult or impossible for them to digest meat etc in the future. You rob the child of the choice of how to best look after their own nutrition when they get older. Veganism is a lifestyle choice that should be an informed choice. A baby cannot make an informed choice or consent to an extreme, restrictive diet that will impact their childhood.

The dictionary says otherwise 😉

So if milk comes from a cow that isn't exploited, is that vegan milk?

It's impossible to take milk from a cow without exploiting her.

100% this!!!

I think yes a vegan diet can be good at any age if done by someone who really knows, but just be so difficult. I think, as someone who is not a vegan, but tries to eat and live as much as a vegan as possible, it can be very difficult for a child to be raised as a vegan. In nursery, birthdays, visiting friends houses…I think you are setting your child up to be different and I think you need to find a balance for child’s sake.

Because veganism is an extreme, exclusionary diet that few people follow. It's an "opting out" of what is the norm.

Why not source ethical animal products and put your child's health above your beliefs? You can consume meat and dairy in much more ethical ways than most vegans would care to admit.

Because she's vegan? She's not going to buy 'ethical' animal products because she's vegan :/
Ethical eggs exist, if you keep your own chickens/ducks or you source them from someone you know personally who does and you have seen the conditions the animals live in. Ethical milk or meat doesn't exist if you're a vegan. That's it, end of story.

Exactly. And it's not just about finding vegan substitutes for essential vitamins, fats and minerals; nobody can actually consume them in the quantities required to get sufficient levels - especially a baby who will be eating tiny amounts at best. The bioavailability of iron etc from plants is so so poor that most vegans are actually deficient in many essential minerals. Just because a plant contains the substance, doesn't mean humans can absorb it well in plant form. When we eat meat, dairy, eggs, the animals have already done the digesting and converting of the minerals so we don't have to. Herbivores have to graze constantly and have adapted stomachs because plants are so nutritionally poor. Then there are all the phytates and oxalates in plants that stop the human body from absorbing essential minerals.

I recommend reading this from a dietician specialised in pregnancy/postpartum: https://lilynicholsrdn.com/vegetarian-diet-in-pregnancy/

She covers the main nutrients missing in vegetarian/vegan diets in pregnancy and beyond.

You can supplement with vitamins/minerals. If I were in your shoes though I would source the most ethically friendly eggs etc that I could and include them in my child's diet.

How is it? You have a pet cow and take a little milk as she feeds her calf. Where's the exploitation?