Unless carefully managed, a vegan diet has a chance of lacking some critical nutrients for the development of young children. I think a vitamin B12 deficiency is common.
Even vegan diets that aren't going to kill you in the long term are still going to cause problems. For example, a vegan diet with >60% fruit (or fruit and grains), will cause amino acid shortages. Too little fruit, of course, causes Vitamin C shortages.
Luckily it's easy to fool yourself into eating meat. Many forms of candy, for example, are meat byproducts. So is, of course, a latte.
That's a pretty exceptional claim, that's not something I believe without a source.
> For example, a vegan diet with >60% fruit (or fruit and grains), will cause amino acid shortages. Too little fruit, of course, causes Vitamin C shortages.
And a meat based diet that doesn't include fruit, or very little has issues too.
This is one of the reasons why currently "plant-based diet" is gaining traction, to take the emphasis off the word vegan because it's been connected to the animal rights and ethics of the vegan movement. [1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150611163242/http://www.tampab...
> " I taught cooking classes for the national non-profit, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and during that time, the phrase "plant-based diet" came to be used as a euphemism for vegan eating, or "the 'v' word." It was developed to take the emphasis off the word vegan, because some associated it with being too extreme a position, sometimes based exclusively in animal rights versus a health rationale."
Where I live, a vegan diet is recognised as part of the official dietary recommendations for children, and is provided also in schools and kindergartens: https://www.ruokavirasto.fi/en/themes/healthy-diet/nutrition...
https://www.ruokavirasto.fi/en/themes/healthy-diet/nutrition...
There's far too many stories of babies dying of malnutrition on vegan diets. While it's possible to make them healthier for them, let's not go saying it's recommended, just like children can survive on crappy junk food (and plenty of them sadly have to), provided it's fortified with nutrients for them. There's a difference between surviving and thriving.
And you have given no proof that a child can't thrive on a vegan diet. Surely it's not something a public health authority recommends, because people generally aren't vegan.
I can't find any study supporting that a vegan diet for infants and children can't be as healthy as a non-vegan diet. There are always outliers, but you also have children on non-vegan diets that are missing vitamins and nutrients.
We'll have good data in a decade or so.
Basically the only exception is infant formula, unless the child has a diagnosed milk allergy. There's also a general recommendation against restricted, e.g. macrobiotic and raw diets.
That of course being the rule of thumb, and obviously people don't necessarily build every meal to exactly that pattern. A pizza night every now and then is okay too.
> rarely have any significant nutrient deficiencies
People in the Nordics are usually already supplementing at least vitamin D due to lack of sunlight, and often iodine due to a lack of it in the soil. So in this context, switching to a combined vegan supplement that includes those as well as B12 is a relatively small change.
It boggles my mind anyone would ascribe to a diet that literally requires vitamin supplements through artificial means in order to be complete. And those are just the obvious deficiencies.
I used to think that, but at some point I thought: what's the big deal? If you're still eating healthy, still eating tasty food, and you just also consume a pill or two every day, is that really so bad, or does it just feel "wrong"?
Most non vegans also get their B12 through supplementation. It just is fed to animals directly or indirectly as cobalt supplement.
> Most forages and feedstuffs fed to dairy and beef animals do not contain adequate quantities of cobalt to support the rumen and animal requirements. Consequently, supplemental cobalt must be added to beef and dairy rations. [1]
[1] https://agriking.com/importance-of-cobalt-to-beef-dairy-catt...
Cows don't make it, they eat it in soil. Which, actually, because most of them are factory farmed, they are fed the supplement. Nothing natural about that; in fact, you're just skipping the middle-man and cruetly.
"But I only eat grass-grazed happy cows!" Good for you! Now how about a solution that can work for everyone.
You want to know what the real next pandemic is. It's going to come from the unbelievable abuse of antibiotics the meat industry is responsible for. Medicine will be set back a century.