Are you concerned at what vegan moms on youtube are feeding their toddlers?
I am! They seem to have zero knowledge of critical nutrients like DHA and K2.
I receive tragic emails from vegan nursing mothers. What to do about the crumbling teeth of their 2-year-old? Or their own cavities?
Read my full reply here: Vitamin K2 to Prevent & Heal Cavities in Teeth and Build Strong Bones — for Vegans & Vegetarians.
But it’s not just K2 deficiency in vegan children!
There are multiple nutrients which children need that may be lacking in a vegan diet.
Critical Nutrients Vegan & Vegetarian Children May Lack
Are you vegan, vegetarian, or plant-strong? Then please, you need to ensure both you and your child get the right levels of the following nutrients, from your pregnancy to their teens:
- Vitamins: A (retinol), B12, D3 and K2,
- Essential fats: DHA/EPA,
- Minerals: calcium, iodine, iron, zinc,
- Protein: especially taurine and carnitine,
- Other nutrients: Choline and Carnosine.
By far the best book to help you, is Nourish: The Definitive Plant-Based Nutrition Guide for Families (#ad) where:
- Reshma Shah, MD, a plant-based pediatrician, and
- Brenda Davis, RD (registered dietitian) a world-renowned expert in plant-based nutrition,
- whose other books include Becoming Raw (#ad) and Becoming Vegan (#ad),
- Give you Nutrition specifics for all the stages of childhood — from pregnancy and breastfeeding all the way through adolescence,
- So your vegan or vegetarian child does NOT suffer from malnutrition.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, in his book Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition (#ad), points out that a single apple contains thousands of phytochemicals. Yet science has studied a paltry few, like vitamin C. The rest we know nothing about!
All these phytochemicals contribute to your health. They impact thousands upon thousands of metabolic reactions inside your body.
Almost every chemical can affect every other chemical, so you get an almost infinite number of biological affects.
We don’t even know what these phytochemicals are, let alone how to calculate the specific influence of each, and their interactions.
Even if we knew all this, it still does not explain the effect of the apple as a WHOLE.
That’s just one apple.
Yes, we need to look at micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals. But whole LIVING foods are on another planet from isolated nutrients.
Please, eat a variety of whole plant foods — as close to Mother Nature as possible — ideally picked within the past 48 hours 🙂
From the next page on, you’ll read the full Chapter 27 from Susan’s book Beyond Broccoli (#ad), expressing the risks of raising a child 100% vegan.
I am convinced you CAN raise a child vegan but ONLY with in-depth knowledge. I want you to know the dangers.