Vegetarian Diets for Children

Eating habits are set in early childhood. Vegetarian diets give your child the chance to learn to enjoy a variety of wonderful, nutritious foods. They provide excellent nutrition for all stages of childhood, from birth through adolescence.

Complete Nutrition for Children

Vegetarian children grow up to be slimmer, healthier, and live longer than their meat-eating friends. It is much easier to build a nutritious diet from vegetarian foods than from animal products, which contain animal fat, cholesterol, and other substances that growing children certainly do not need.

Breast-feeding is nature’s way of meeting the infant’s nutritional needs, and also helps boost the infant’s immunity, not to mention its psychological benefits. When breast-feeding is not possible, commercial soy formulas are nutritionally adequate. There is no need for infants to be raised on cow’s milk formulas. Aside from the colic-inducing proteins that bother many children on cow’s milk formulas, cow’s milk is a common cause of allergies. Immune responses to milk proteins are implicated in insulin-dependent diabetes and even in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Soy formulas are commonly used in all hospital nurseries, although they can occasionally be allergenic as well. Soymilk sold in grocery stores is not the same as soy baby formula, however, and is not adequate for infants.

Babies are usually born with rather high iron levels. During the first three months of life, iron supplementation should be avoided unless prescribed by your pediatrician. There is evidence that overly high iron intake can disrupt immune function and make infection more likely. However, this soon changes. Growing children need iron. A variety of beans and green leafy vegetables help meet the body’s iron needs. The vitamin C in vegetables and fruits enhances the iron absorption.

Iron is another reason to avoid cow’s milk. Cow’s milk is very low in iron and can induce a mild, chronic blood loss from the digestive tract.

Calcium is supplied by beans and green leafy vegetables, and excluding animal proteins helps the body retain calcium.

Children need protein to grow, but they do not need high-protein foods. A varied menu of grains, beans, vegetables, and fruits supplies plenty of protein. The “protein deficiencies” that our parents worried about in impoverished countries were the result of starvation or diets restricted to very few food items. Protein deficiency is extremely unlikely on a diet drawn from a variety of plant foods.

Very young children may need a slightly higher fat intake than do adults. Soybean products may be helpful for this purpose. Tofu hot dogs and seasoned tempeh burgers, for example, are very well accepted. However, do not take the need for fat in the diet too far. American children very often have the beginnings of heart disease before they finish high school. In contrast, Japanese children in decades past grew up on diets which were much lower in fat than those which are common in America, and there is every indication that they were better off for it.

Vitamin B12

Be sure to include a regular source of vitamin B12. It is essential for healthy blood and healthy nerves. It is plentiful in many commercial cereals. Check the labels for the words cyanocobalamin or B12. Children who do not eat these supplemented products should have a B12 supplement of 3 or more micrograms per day. Common children’s vitamins contain more than enough B12. Spirulina and seaweed are not a reliable source of vitamin B12.

Children also need sunlight, which allows the body to make vitamin D. Children in latitudes with diminished sunlight may need the vitamin D in a typical multivitamin supplement.

Perhaps the most important consideration for children is this: childhood is the time when dietary habits are established, habits which exert a life-long effect. Children who acquire a taste for chicken nuggets, roast beef, and french fries today are the cancer patients, heart patients, and weight-loss clinic patients of tomorrow. Children who are raised on the New Four Food Groups of grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes, will have a lower risk of heart disease and cancer, compared to their counterparts raised on the average American diet. They will also tend to stay slimmer and live years longer.

Some studies suggest that the growth of vegetarian children is more gradual, i.e., a bit slower at first, but then catching up later on. Final heights and weights are comparable to those of meat-eating children. Interestingly, breast-fed babies also grow more slowly than bottle-fed babies. It may well be that nature designed the human body to grow up more gradually, to reach puberty later, and to last longer than happens for most of us raised on omnivorous diets.

In a 1980 study in Boston, researchers measured the IQs of vegetarian children. Some of the children were following a macrobiotic diet, a few were Seventh-day Adventists (many of whom follow a plant-based diet), and the rest were from families that had simply decided to go vegetarian. On intelligence testing, the kids were considerably above average. The average IQ was 116. Now the diet probably had nothing to do with their intelligence. Rather, these vegetarian families were better educated than the average meat-eating family, and it is probably the parental education, rather than a dietary effect, that was reflected in their children’s measured intelligence. On the other hand, this study should help reassure vegetarian parents who wonder whether there is something in animal products that is needed for brain development. There isn’t.

Infants

The best food for newborns is breast milk. If your baby is not being breast-fed, soy formulas are a good alternative and are widely available. Do not use commercial soymilk. Babies have special needs and require a soy formula that is developed especially for those needs.

Infants do not need any nourishment other than breast milk or soy formula for the first several months of life. Breast-fed infants need about two hours a week of sun exposure to make vitamin D. Some infants, especially those who are dark-skinned or who live in cloudy climates, may not make adequate amounts of vitamin D. In that case, vitamin D supplements may be necessary.

Breast milk or infant formula should be used for at least the first year of your baby’s life.

At about 4 to 5 months of age, or when your baby’s weight has doubled, other foods can be added to the diet.
Add one new food at a time, at one- to two-week intervals. The following guidelines provide a flexible plan for adding foods to your baby’s diet.

4 to 5 Months

- Introduce iron-fortified infant cereal. Try rice cereal first since it is the least likely to cause allergies. Mix it with a little breast milk or soy formula. Then offer oat or barley cereals to your baby.

6 to 8 Months

- Introduce vegetables. They should be thoroughly cooked and mashed. Potatoes, green beans, carrots, and peas are all good first choices.
-Introduce fruits next. Try mashed bananas, avocados, strained peaches, or applesauce.
-Introduce breads. By 8 months of age, most babies can eat crackers, bread, and dry cereal.
-Introduce protein-rich foods. Also, by about 8 months, infants can begin to eat higher protein foods like tofu or beans that have been cooked well and mashed.

Children

Children have a high calorie and nutrient need, but their stomachs are small. Offer your child frequent snacks, and include some less “bulky” foods like refined grains and fruit juices. Do limit juices however, since children may fill up on them, preferring their sweetness to other foods.

Calorie needs vary from child to child. The following guidelines are general ones.

Food Groups

Breads, cereals, and grains
- Includes bread, hot and cold cereals, pasta, cooked grains such as rice and barley, crackers.
-A serving is 1/2 cup of pasta, grain, or cereal, or 1 slice of bread.
Beans
-Includes any cooked bean such as pinto, kidney, lentils, split peas, black-eyed peas, navy beans, and chickpeas. Also includes soy products such as tofu.
-A serving is 1/2 cup of beans.
Soymilk
-Choose fortified soymilk, such as Westsoy Plus, Edensoy, or Better Than Milk, whenever possible, or use other vegetable-based milk substitutes.
-A serving is 8 ounces.
Leafy Green Vegetables
-Includes broccoli, kale, spinach, collards, turnip, mustard, and beet greens, and Swiss chard.
-A serving is 1/2 cup cooked.
Other Vegetables
-Includes all other vegetables.
-A serving is 1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw.
Fruits
-Includes all fruits and fruit juices.
-A serving is 1/2 cup cooked fruit, 1/2 cup fruit juice, 1/4 cup dried fruit, or 1 piece of fruit.
Nuts
-Includes all nuts, nut butters, seeds and seed butters.
-A serving is 1 tablespoon.
Fats
-Includes all vegetable oils and margarine.
-A serving is 1 teaspoon.
Supplemental Foods
-1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
-1 tablespoon Blackstrap molasses

Sample Menus

Ages 1 to 4 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Breakfast
Cheerios with soymilk
Orange juice
Lunch
Hummus (chickpea and sesame seed butter spread)
on crackers
Banana
Soymilk
Carrot sticks
Dinner
Lentil-tomato loaf
Mashed potatoes
Creamed kale
Soymilk
Snacks
Prunes
Soymilk
Ages 4 to 6 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Breakfast
Apple-cinnamon oatmeal
Soymilk
Orange wedges
Lunch
Tofu-egg salad on bread
Apple juice
Carrot sticks
Oatmeal cookie
Dinner
Baked beans with blackstrap molasses
Baked potato
Spinach
Soymilk
Pineapple chunks
Snacks
Trail mix
Graham crackers
Soymilk
Ages 7 to 12 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Breakfast
Raisin Bran with soymilk and sliced banana
Toast with almond butter
Orange juice
Lunch
Macaroni and blended tofu with nutritional yeast
Fruit salad
Bread
Green beans with almonds
Dinner
Lentil soup
Salad with greens and broccoli
Roll
Steamed carrots
Snacks
Popcorn
Trail mix
Figs

Planning Meals for Children