Vegetarian baby

[ExBrightonBell]

Was after some advice/reassurance about veggie babies. Lo is 9mo and we're doing BLW which is going well. I was checking the Vegetarian Society website today and reading their PDF. It says that:

"Veggie babies require two servings of split pulses (red lentils, split peas and chick peas), tofu, daily."

So does this mean that lunch and dinner every day should contain split pulses or tofu? I'm not sure I'm achieving this! Red lentils go in a lot of what I'm cooking, but I haven't actually given tofu yet. I do use a lot of other pulses such as black beans, butter beans, kidney beans etc. (I do also give ds vitamin/minerals daily).

How often do you give split pulses/tofu? Are these guidelines correct?

I did BLW with both of mine. We're all veggie in this house! I literally just gave them some of whatever we were having. I must admit we blanded down a bit and probably wouldn't do that again! i now have to add peri peri sauce separately to my own food to bypass the 'tooo spicyyyyy' wailing. But we didn't follow any rules about x servings of this or that - we took the view that our diet included more than enough of everything the babies needed to thrive so just gave them that. And they thrived. They're now 5 and 7 and the only vegetarian children in the school. That's a whole other can of meat-free worms!

Sorry for hijack but corriedale could you come and give me some pointers on being vegetarian on the thread I've just started "so my 10 year old DD is vegetarian..."

Are you vegetarian or vegan? Can you not give eggs or cheese rather than pulses all the time?

I'm not vegan, so eggs are an option, although ds does not tend to eat them very well. They tend to get played with and then dropped rather than eaten! I do put egg in things eg pancakes for brekkie and so on - I guess that would count.

I eat a varied diet and had no issues when pregnant eg not anaemic or anything. I just worry about it more now!!

Eggs yolks are rich in iron so that is why I asked.

I'm veggie and ds may be given meat on the few occasions we are out and it is suitable with dp but so far at 7.5 mo he has shunned it when offered. V interested in those guideline so i suppose i must try harder. He does like omelettes, humous, cheese and the odd thing we have with pulses. I also at least once a day offer a dried apricot or two as I know their good for iron. I had borderline iron in pregnancy so am a bit worried but I supplement.

I brought DD up as a veggie before she decided to try meat. I gave her lots of lentils, beans, quinoa, dried fruits (for iron), and cheese.

We had to see a dietician for other issues, and she was really supportive of the vegetarian diet I was feeding DD, unlike a woman I had a run-in with!

There are some great veggie cookery books aimed at young children, my favourite being Veggie Food For Kids by Sara Lewis.

Thanks for the book recommendation LoveMyBoots, I will check that one out as I've not come across it before.

Hello, we have a vegetarian household here and I remember worrying about the same issues. I wasn't sure how much protein, iron etc to give my little one (she is now 2). I thus did a bit of research and started a blog with info about nutritional needs and our favourite vegetarian recipes:broccoliandricecakes.wordpress.com
I found out as much info as I could about the nutritional needs of children and have summarised my research about: Protein, iron, B12, and zinc I'm hope you'd find these pages useful.
As my daughter has grown up, I have also seen how children's diets vary so much whether veggie or not. I know children that would be meat eaters but are fussy so have a very restricted diet. Thus, I have come to the conclusion that we can only try our best to be informed and simply offer our children healthy diets and go from there...it's an interesting journey!

Sob!! Ds has been vegetarian so far and I've just decided to let him make his own mind up - he's 4.5
He's food obsessed so worried he'll pick meat!!
We haven't done anything like two portions pulses ROTC and the two vegetarian ones are probably the two most portly!!!

I'm veggie and have two DCs brought up vegetarian/pescetarian.

They had quite a lot of tofu as babies, because we were living in Japan and it was easy; also some other soy things like natto (fermented soy beans). Other protein sources were red lentils (eg home-made lentil burgers - still a favourite now they are 14 and 10), egg-based things (pancakes, omelettes, French toast), some cheese, some nuts (eg things made with ground almonds) etc. Not much in the way of meat-substitutes like Quorn because a) I don't like them and b) you can't get much like that in Japan. They had fish maybe a couple of times a week as DH wasn't vegetarian, and nursery meals in Japan often involved fish.

They would probably have had some form of lentil/pulse/tofu-based protein most days, but certainly not two portions every day. I think you just need touse a bit of common sense and make sure they have a variety of foods with protein and iron in. My two have both grown up big, strong & healthy without my getting too stressed about exactly what they are eating every day.