Vegan baby

[Expecteddeclathon]

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

So if having your own chicken is ethical eggs, why is having your own cow not ethical milk? And I'm not talking about HER being vegan, she has asked about a baby! I was suggesting she look at sourcing more ethical animal produce for her baby's health. Just because you, as an adult, has made a lifestyles choice to be vegan, doesn't mean that you can ignore the nutritional needs of a baby. Vegan babies have died from malnutrition and their parents had the best of intentions. Google some of the notable cases from UK and France for example.

So are you offering OP milk from your pet cow, or was that just a theoretical cow?

Bees are exploited for the production of almond milk, if you're interested.

A poster said there is no ethical way to have milk and I was giving 1 example of an ethical way. Is thay so hard to comprehend or do vegan mental gymnastics not allow it?

I’m not vegan. I was just pointing out that ‘own a cow’ isn’t practical advice for most parents. OP is asking about real world options, not hypothetical ones.

I'd ask your GP or HV if it's okay. Going back about 5 years ago my friend was advised not to put her child on a vegan diet until she was about 3 (vegetarian was fine).
However if you're confident you can meet your babies nutritional needs then why not?

Surely, any diet where you have to have supplements added, such as how would vegan babies survive without beefed up iron fortified stuff, seems unnatural. Surely, give a diet that naturally contains what babies/children need in a complete sense, and then once they reach adulthood they can decide if they want to go another way and have a diet which needs to include supplements (which is a perfectly fine decision for an adult to make btw).

In my opinion it’s fine for a baby to be vegan, provided you’re well versed in their nutritional requirements. Milk is still their main source of nutrition until they are 12 months.

The debate about breastmilk being vegan is unnecessary.

I can't think of a case in which a child with a vegan diet died where abuse/neglect wasn't also involved such as failing to seek medical attention and/or feeding a child a tiny amount of food such as only raw vegetables and seeds which isn't a typical vegan diet.

There's also plenty of cases which involved a child dying from malnutrition or other complications due to parental neglect too from withholding food/failing to seek medical attention and the child didn't have a vegan diet.

I was not suggesting she own a cow. I was simply refuting the lie that all dairy is exploitation.

She also isn't asking for real world options at all. She's just looking for folk to back her point of view so she can alleviate her conscience after disagreeing with her friend.

The milk is not for you. It's not ethical to take the milk. And even if it was, who has pet cows? Where are you proposing that people get 'ethical' milk from?

OP, you might find this helpful from First Steps Nutrition. They have a whole guide about a vegan diet for under 5's.

Vegan infants — First Steps Nutrition Trust

It’s fine as long as you know what you’re doing (pediatric nutrition very different from adult). It’s not easy in the West, and it’s very time consuming. If it’s not time consuming that means you will either be giving the baby a very restricted diet or you will be resorting to UPFs and/or substitute products which are worse than the original thing. So, yes it’s fine but please do thorough research on pediatric veganism. It’s not the same as yours.

That could be said about almost any post on here and a big assumption about her motives. Asking for views doesn’t automatically mean someone is trying to soothe their conscience.

Speak to your GP.

😂 "it's not for you". By that logic we shouldn't eat anything that comes from nature. Everyone arguing about whether breast milk is dairy or whether you can ethically drink milk are missing the point entirely - there is a baby here whose future health will be decided by a moral rather than nutritional decision. I knew someone who was vegan so fed her cat vegan pet food. As an obligated carnivore the cat developed severe illness and died. That's animal cruelty. Where does that sit in the vegan ethics? Babies also have nutritional needs that absolutely cannot be met with an entirely vegan diet without supplementation.

This is what the OP wrote:

"My child is 6 months old, it quite literally is entirely up to me to choose what they eat. I’m vegan, therefore I’m not going to buy and prepare meat and dairy products am I, defeats the whole point of being vegan because I’d still be supporting those industries with my money"

Sounds like she has already made her mind up to me!

Cows' milk is a bulking agent specifically meant for calves. It's not really meant for human consumption anyway otherwise, in theory, we could drink the milk of any other mammal, but we generally only drink milk from cows and goats.

Breast milk is definitely dairy, but is considered to be vegan because it's given with the consent of the mother, as opposed to cows milk where the cow gets no choice in the matter.

Google says it is dairy.

I’ve always genuinely wondered this: if I have a ex battery chicken and keep it in my garden as a pet and treat it very well, if I eat the egg it will produce, is that ok with veganism? Logic would say no as it’s an animal product but this thread is suggesting yes, as that chicken is not being exploited, it’s being loved and will produce that egg whether I eat it or not. So is veganism about not using any animal product in any way at all, or about not exploiting an animal?

How is any animal's milk a "bulking agent"? So when I breastfeed my baby I'm giving him a bulking agent?

Here's the definition of a bulking agent:

A bulking agent is an additive used in food, pharmaceuticals, and other industries to increase volume, weight, or thickness without significantly altering the taste or nutritional value. These substances, such as cellulose or starches, act as fillers to improve texture, mouthfeel, or structure in processed foods and products.

No milk from an animal is a bulking agent. That kind of language is so deliberate to try to make natural foods sound like non-food products. That's cult-like propaganda.

If you are going to do it anyway make sure your baby is getting vitamin D, iron drops and B12. Personally I think it’s a bad idea, children go through rapid growth and we are meant to be omnivores. Theres some evidence that it can affect growth I would go vegetarian at the max and let them have some dairy. My best friend growing up was vegetarian (didn’t eat eggs either) but her parents fed her eggs when she was little despite not eating them for religious reasons themselves.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10934552/

Know what does have bulking agents in it? Plant based milks!