This is Why a Vegan Diet Can Harm Children

If you really want to feed your child a vegan diet, you should be extremely careful.

That’s what it’s about:

More and more people are eating vegan food and their children – is that a problem?

Anyone who eats a vegan diet avoids all animal products: no meat, no fish, but also no dairy products and eggs. Most vegans want to protect animals and the environment. Many are also convinced that a vegan diet is healthier. According to surveys, around 1.3 million people in Germany are currently vegan – and the number is growing.

Anyone who lives vegan and has children likes to transfer their eating habits to their own offspring. The first vegan day care center opened in Frankfurt in 2018.

That’s why we need to talk about it:

A vegan diet can affect the development of children

One thing is clear: if you completely avoid animal foods, you also do without a lot of nutrients – some of which are only found in these products. This increases the risk of malnutrition. “Basically, the more food groups are excluded from the diet, the greater the risk of an insufficient nutrient supply,” writes a team of authors from the German Society for Child and Adolescent Medicine (DGKJ) in a recently published statement. The society recommends a balanced omnivorous diet – with plenty of plant-based foods and moderate consumption of meat, sea fish and dairy products. This is the easiest way to meet nutritional needs.

The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) is also opposed to a vegan diet for certain groups: “The DGE does not recommend a vegan diet for pregnant women, breastfeeding women, infants, children and young people.” It is difficult to do with a purely plant-based diet , to ensure an adequate supply of some nutrients.

The DGE also writes what exactly vegan-fed children can more easily lack: It is possible that there is an undersupply of energy, proteins, iron, calcium, iodine, zinc, vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B12 (cobalamin) and vitamin D – including the supply of long-chain ones n-3 fatty acids is lower. These nutrients are particularly important for children and pregnant women.

Above all, vitamin B12 can only be ingested by vegans through dietary supplements – it is only found in animal foods. The vitamin is important for cell division, blood formation and nerve function. “Around half of children with vitamin B12 deficiency retain lifelong neurological damage,” says Berthold Koletzko from the German Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine (DGKJ). The doctor had dealt with such cases himself.

But:

There is a lack of large, meaningful studies – and non-vegan nutrition can also be a risk

Individual studies also indicate that a vegan diet can cause problems for children. Growth retardation and nutrient deficiencies are usually reported. A current study from Germany also supports these results. The preliminary results of the researchers: ten percent of the vegan and six percent of the vegetarian children who were examined are too small for their age.
The problem: The well-known studies do give indications of what can happen with a wrong vegan diet, but they are often small and old – and therefore say little about the current situation in Germany.

The new study from Germany is also only of limited significance. It does show that the vegan children studied are more likely to have delayed growth, but not whether the vegan diet is actually the cause: “It can happen that a child on a vegan diet is smaller than other children of the same age,” says Ute Alexy who participated in the investigation. “But we can’t yet say why that is and what effects it can have. We still lack too much information for that.”

The smaller body size could also be related to the size of the parents, or to the fact that the child was breastfed longer and fed too little – these reasons had been shown to be the cause in some of the earlier studies. This cannot be ruled out with the current data. “We hope to find answers in a larger follow-up study,” says Alexy. It has already been commissioned and the first results should be available in 2020.

However, studies on nutrition are often difficult in general: the participants – or their parents – often have to document themselves what they have eaten. This can easily lead to inaccuracies.

And now?

Dietary supplements are a must for vegans

Anyone who feeds their child vegan should definitely seek medical advice and have it checked regularly to see if the child is developing any deficiency symptoms. Basically, the more food groups are excluded from the diet, the greater the risks. For example, if a child does not like legumes, the risk increases further.

One thing is clear: A vegan diet without the consistent intake of food supplements will definitely lead to a lack of vitamin B12. The DGKJ writes that special attention should also be paid to the intake of iron, zinc, iodine, DHA, calcium and proteins. This is the only way to reduce the risk of serious clinical consequences such as growth disorders, anemia or neurological damage.

You shouldn’t be afraid of food supplements, says pediatrician Koletzko: The vitamins we take in are exactly what we get from food – they’re just synthetically produced. Such things could be explained in detail in a consultation and the risk for vegan children could be reduced to a minimum. “It’s no use dogmatically insisting that vegan nutrition is unhealthy, that’s not the point,” says Ute Alexy. There will always be parents who want to feed their children vegan. It is important to advise them on this. Properly implemented, a vegan diet can also enable children to develop normally.