Kids and Vegan Diets

Kids and Vegan Diets?   Children grow and growing bodies need nutrients but should they be Vegan? Are they healthy? Do they live longer? There is a growing body of research in support of well-planned vegan diets for kids of all ages. One of these is the 2016 position paper on vegetarian diets from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, which states that vegan diets “are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.” Furthermore, children raised vegan tend to grow up leaner, healthier, and with longer life expediencies, and they are more connected to their food than their omnivorous peers. A plant-based diet rich in a variety of whole foods is rich in essential nutrients for growth and development. In doing research on this post I found that many dietitians insist on adding B12, iron, zinc, and calcium. The Vegan diet for children is proving to be a much healthier diet than the SAD which has been linked to increased risk for obesity and a variety of chronic diseases, starting in childhood, whereas well-planned veganism has been shown to prevent and even reverse many of these ailments. Raising your child as Vegan is a personal choice and appears to have far healthier outcomes, allows the child to be connected with what he or she eats as ‘healthy’, and connects the the child and family to real, natural food.     Stay healthy my friends, Vegan Doc  For reference check out  “Vegan pregnancy and parenting” group on Facebook.