Can I raise my child as a vegan?

[muddlethroughmumma]

I myself have been vegan for nearly a year, and all throughout my pregnancy I was shamed for being vegan even though if anything my baby's growth and our health was off of the charts, can I raise my child to be vegan or would it be seen as limiting his diet in a wrong way, don't get me wrong have had soy protein as meat alternatives in foods to ensure we are still consuming a balanced diet so there wouldn't be any limitations on his diet. If anyone else is raising their children as vegans or vegan their self I would appreciate some advice. xxx

Yes, both due to allergy. I was replying to a poster saying that alternative milks are not sufficient when they were told that oat milk is.

´Sufficient’ doesn’t mean the same thing as ´just as good as’.
oat milk is pretty low in protein and high in carbs so you’d want to be rebalancing that somewhere else. And I’m guessing they add some fat into oat milk to improve the nutritional profile too?

I was using the pp wording. The parents I know were told Oat milk was suitable for their babies after 12 months. I was just making the point that it is suitable as another poster had said it isn’t.
Oat milk has a similar amount of protein as breast milk so that’s not a not a concern.

Please be careful. I know someone who tried and it ruined her child’s teeth 😢

Such as?

The treatment autistic children. Read what the UN had to say about it.

OF autistic children

Yes this does happen but the current advice is even with high fat content oatly barista, formula or breast milk should be continued until 2 years of age. In some circumstances a dietician may decide that replacement milks be used from 1, but this is totally dependant on general health and solid intake so not a given by any means. The dietician told me that we'd likely OK using it from 1 but it certainly wasn't best case scenario and they'd prefer 2 years as stated in the guidance. I just think it's best to assume 2 years when thinking about a vegan diet to be on the safe side rather than think you can definitely stop at 1.

Definitely not using formula and both kids wouldn’t breast feed anymore unfortunately. They’re healthy and growing well. It’s not really helpful for people like the pp to point out it’s not as good. They did as advised which was to use oat milk.

One of my kids barely drank any milk after 10 months. 🤷🏻‍♀️

We all have anecdotes of babies we know who had no milk from whatever age and are healthy. I'm simply stating the NHS dietetic and WHO guidance so that the op has the facts which I thought she may may find helpful 😊

Of course- have a look at this
static1.squarespace.com/static/59f75004f09ca48694070f3b/t/5e56fa31f3d6f227ed61362c/1582758484838/Eating_well_Vegans-Feb_2020_forweb.pdf

and plant based juniors on Instagram

Yes. Our family are vegan Anna I was vegan in pregnancy. Or six year old is plant based she doesn’t want to eat animals she wants to pet animals. She’s very healthy. Never been ill. I cook every day I don’t like to feed her processed food

No milk? Every mammal needs milk to live in infancy

Eating a vegan diet left me with a vitamin B12 deficiency and a vitamin D deficiency. I felt great initially but awful later on. I tried to do it healthily too, lots of research regarding nutrients but it just didn't work for me so I wouldn't recommend for a child.

I am veggie. Brother is vegan. He and his partner have decided to bring up my niece as a veggie until she is much older because there are an increasing number of small scale studies like this:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33471422/

Where young children are given vegan meals prepared by nutritionists so they should have everything a child needs BUT these children are still showing deficiencies. None of the studies are large enough to be conclusive but all are official proper peer reviewed scientific studies. They just aren’t prepared to risk it.

feed your child a healthy diet. What would that include lactation from a Cow or decomposing body parts? Go back to basics

That’s not the case actually- plant-based sources of calcium are generally more absorbable than animal sources because we can digest the plant-based foods easier and break them down and utilize the nutrients better.

Another OP who starts a thread (which people take time and care to post on) and then can’t even be bothered to post a cursory ‘thank you’, much less actually engage with any of the ideas or opinions offered. 🙄

Why , not what

Also the NHS says it’s fine to wean onto soya milk after one year. There is no evidence that this is harmful as part of a balanced plant based diet.

I was quoting a pp who said their baby had no milk from 10 months and another from 1 year. Just pointing out that anecdotes aren't always in line with NHS advice.

It was NHS consultant/dietician that this advice came from. Both were advised that for their children, oat milk was suitable from 12 months, the consultant was aware that they would no longer breast feed. No formula advised. You said that you were told alternative milk wasn’t sufficient and your child would need breast milk until age 2. So clearly there is different advice out there. I had already advised OP to speak to a dietician about her own child’s needs if she does decide to go ahead. I would have wanted to do that if I was raising my children on a vegan diet as I’d have wanted advice on other aspects of their diet, as well as suitable alternative milks. It’s too important to get wrong.

Please don't. My sister has been doing this with my two nieces. The older one is skinny and pale and always complaining she's hungry. She's always asking to eat meat and says she feels left out at school when the other kids eat yummy pizza and she has cold broccoli which my militant sister has sent in 🤮 The younger one is a bit more feisty and just throws things on the floor that she doesn't want. She's not quite as thin but still doesn't look healthy. Maybe you could consider vegan at home and meat at school so they don't stick out like a sore thumb. Don't enforce your views on them.

VeganGod you really shouldn’t take the advice given to 2 families you know who have a specific set of circumstances (allergies, breastfeeding no longer an option) that mean oat milk is the best choice for them and then extrapolate that and assume that oat milk from 12months is a good choice for all infants. Me suggesting that oat milk is not the ideal choice for all young children absolutely does not mean I think those 2 families are not doing the best for their children. They sought an actual dietitian’s advice for a start! Good parenting happening there. Those same dietitians would have given different advice to families in different circumstances. Incidentally are those children being raised on an entirely vegan diet? That’s quite relevant to their dietitian’s advice that full fat oat milk is an suitable choice for them.
I respect vegan’s and vegetarian’s commitment to animal rights and their decision to avoid animal derived foods. The OPs question was all about whether she could reasonably raise her baby vegan from birth. My response was, yes probably but you need to really think the milk thing through. Extended breastfeeding solves most of the worries, but if that doesn’t work for OP then some compromise - so perhaps a vegetarian diet including milk or dairy products and maybe eggs, rather than vegan for a few years, is likely to be best in terms of nutrition and development. That doesn’t mean a vegan toddler will definitely be clinically malnourished. Not at all. But it’s harder and if your child won’t eat enough of the right vegan foods then it might be impossible.
Milk is just a really big deal for the first few years. Under 2s often get 1/3 to half their daily calories from milk. It’s a huge proportion of their diet. And the consequences if getting it badly wrong are more severe in an infant or young child than they are for an older child or an adult. You can’t just substitute a drink made from plants without serious consideration of the nutritional qualities of that drink and the rest of the child’s diet. Some plans will be fine (breastfeeding for 3-4 years then adding in a glass of fortified soymilk - sounds great) Some plans are not fine or not possible in the UK (breastfeeding for 1 month then insisting on vegan formula - there aren’t any available in this country for that age group for medical reasons). Some plans are probably ok but not ideal and I’d be hoping a friend with a similar plan would seek a dietitian’s advice - like breastfeeding for six months then switching to soybased or rice based formula, breastfeeding for a year then planning to switch to a plant based ´milk’.
And some plans are just not ok but I’m not going to assume anyone here is stupid enough to consider them (eg. ordinary plant based ´milk’ instead of breastmilk or formula of any kind for a child under 12 months).