For the last 30 years exactly, since I left home for college, my diet has been mostly vegetarian. That’s taken different forms over the last few decades. When I dropped meat for ethical reasons and joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, at age 18, I was a strict vegan, and then I became vegetarian when I did a year abroad in France, which meant I could also have dairy. At the time, there were such limited food options in the country for vegetarians (let alone vegan students who didn’t know how to cook) that I simply had to eat cheese, or I would have starved. I survived that year on a simple diet of baguettes, creamy cheeses, chocolate croissants and red wine (it was delicious, but I wouldn’t recommend it from a health standpoint).
When I lived in Italy, I incorporated some seafood into my diet, becoming “pescatarian” during the summers when we spent time at the beach (there’s nothing more satisfying than noshing on spaghetti alle vongole at the Mediterranean seaside). I later stopped when I returned to the US and started working on ocean conservation and learned more about overfishing and microplastics. I added a tiny bit of selective seafood back in again during my pregnancies for an additional source of protein, and now I consume it on rare, special occasions, such as during our trip to Sardinia last September.
These shifts in my diet over the years I made easily and without too much grief or being overly concerned about my health. Arguably, a plant-based diet (a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes) is better for you and for the planet. Even if you don’t believe this, there are more than a billion vegetarians around the world, with India, Mexico and Brazil having the largest populations of them. If it wasn’t good for your health, there probably wouldn’t be entire populaces who subsist on vegetarian food, which is pretty easy to do in most places these days. (A vegan diet, however, takes much more effort and attention, and there’s a greater chance that you’ll miss out on nutrients like Vitamin B12 if you don’t supplement accordingly).
Kids Change Everything
Now that I have children, of course, it’s a different story. When it comes to our children, there is so much more at stake with these decisions because these are the growing years, and I would never forgive myself if I made a decision that impacted their health in a negative way.
When I was first pregnant, people would ask me if was going to raise my children vegetarian. My instinct was always no. I’m not sure why that was, honestly. Is it because I grew up eating meat? Not hamburgers and hot dogs, though there was some of that being American, but with a nonvegetarian Indian mother, most of what we ate at dinner time consisted of beautifully spiced Parsi or northern Indian dishes and stews with meat in them. We never ate things like tofu or avocado. All the vegetables we ate were cooked and mixed into some kind of curry. The only beans I ever ate growing up were chickpeas in the tomato-based Indian dish channa masala. On occasion, we had steak which we doused with A1 sauce (it was the eighties).
As a stay-at-home mother these last few years, I’ve found myself spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about meals and making many of them from scratch, which is a luxury but also exhausting when you have picky eaters. And while I never planned on raising vegetarians, my children, now 3 and 5, are pretty vegetarian in their choices. What I have made at home has been largely plant-based though definitely not dairy-free and with the occasional meat on offer. If you’re thinking cheese sandwiches, think again. As we are a multicultural home, I’m a big believer in exposing them to foods from their own cultures (Iran and India) as well as from other cultures.
Vegetarian-wise, dal and rice, a protein-rich Indian dish, is a staple in our home as is ash reshteh, a Persian noodle soup with loads of green herbs, chickpeas and kidney beans, or any kind of biryiani, a lightly spiced rice dish from the Indian subcontinent that can be made with vegetables like potato, carrots and peas. We do Mexican night on Tuesdays and Ethiopian carry-out regularly, as the kids love the vegan platter and the injera (though not the spicy beef tibs). I regularly make Yachaejeon, Korean vegetable pancakes, pupusas, corn cakes stuffed with beans, cheese, or chicken—a classic from El Salvador—and a Thai red curry with coconut milk.
In terms of meat, I serve the extended family turkey for Thanksgiving each year, but the kids haven’t wanted to try it, even when I casually put in on their plates. I’ve made beautiful roast chickens using recipes from the New York Times cooking section, but they kind of pick at it, preferring pasta, rice or legume dishes. I’ve made their Dad lamb stews and keema mattar (minced ground beef with peas), a spiced dish from India, but they won’t even go near those dishes and I don’t force it. I just put a dollop on their plates, along with “safe foods,” a la Dr. Becky Kennedy’s advice, and see what happens. Usually it remains untouched (keeping in mind it can take a toddler 8 to 15 exposures to a new food before they are likely to try it and potentially accept it as part of their diet).
Whenever we dine out, I offer the children meat as well as vegetarian dishes off the menu as I don’t want them to think any real food is “off-limits.” Their Dad, who favors meat and often has kebab, meatballs or spaghetti bolognese on his plate, offers a taste to them, but they have shown little interest in anything meaty beyond chicken tenders or calamari when we are in a restaurant. I’ve ordered them butter chicken (chicken tikka masala) at Indian restaurants, but they scrunch their noses.So they have eaten some meat, not much, and that’s fine with me. Is it because I didn’t eat meat when I was pregnant with them? Who knows.
I’m not worried about it as often young kids don’t like the texture of meat (or anything too saucy), and that’s why I usually blend a small amount of organic ground turkey or chicken into homemade tomato pasta sauce just to give them some heme iron. I add small amounts of homemade bone broth to various dishes for this reason as well. I’ll admit it was pretty hard at first to handle the raw meat and place a whole chicken in the slow cooker to produce this “healing elixir,” which many cultures consider deeply nourishing for the gut. And this may sound strange coming from a vegetarian, but I am relieved when my children eat a bit of (ideally well-sourced, organic, hormone-free) meat or bone broth here and there. It’s not so much for the amount of protein, it’s for the exposure and that they are getting protein and iron from a diversity of sources, not just dairy and legumes.
I don’t lose sleep over protein intake because it’s easy enough to get protein into a child’s diet especially when there are no dairy restrictions. In fact, contrary to popular belief, children don’t need a ton of protein at this age anyway (around 13 grams for a growing toddler). That’s very easy to get with a vegetarian diet—for example, one mozzarella string cheese has 7 grams of protein, and if you give them that for snack along with hummus or black bean dip and crackers, or a handful of nuts and some Greek yogurt, or a boiled egg, you’ve already reached your daily quota.
Exploring Veganism
It takes more effort to meet the daily protein needs of a vegan child, but not impossible, especially if you’re creative with nut butters and seeds (my son has a nut allergy so that definitely would not work for us). But with careful planning and sourcing, it is possible to raise a healthy and thriving vegan child. As my childhood pediatrician, a vegetarian from India, reminded me, “elephants and hippos are vegan and look how huge and strong they are.” One vegan mother I know, who has raised three children, says she has to be mindful of caloric intake when implementing a plant-based diet with her two-year-old, who she is raising vegan for ethical and health reasons.
To ensure he gets all the nutrition he needs, she gave him a plant-based formula chockfull of vitamins for the first two years of his life, which obviously helps with weight gain (breastfed babies tend to be leaner than formula babies). When I ask her what foods she makes sure he consumes on a daily basis to get the necessary vitamins, she says she gives him, “seeds, whole grains, lentils, tofu, chick peas, avocados, bok choy, spinach-banana-date smoothies, peas, sweet potatoes, apples, blueberries, and strawberries.” She also adds a vanilla protein powder to banana muffins.
Of course, there are others who say a vegan diet is not optimal nutrition-wise as it’s restrictive. For me, if you go with the Western version of a vegan diet, you may inadvertently end up feeding your child too many synthetic foods like formula, low -quality tofu (unless you make it at home), fake synthetic meats, soy (which is such a doctored food and controversial on different levels), or not enough food. For example, rice and sauteed bok choy are not filling for long periods (and the last thing I want on my hands is a hangry toddler). Personally, I think the Indian diet—with its pulses, curries, dosas, idlis and nutritious whole wheat breads—is much more nutritious and filling for a vegan child, if parents decide to go that route.
Another friend of mine who is pesco-lacto-ovo-vegetarian and raising her kids that way, said the first thing that she thinks about is iron intake. She says “the most the important thing is to explain to your child the reasons for this diet preference while leaving flexibility for children to make their own choices. My daughter really wanted to try turkey at Thanksgiving for a few years and that was fine with me,” she said.
But beyond the debate about nutrition, I worry about what restrictions (that are not allergy-based) can do to a child on a psychological level. I think it can backfire, and lead to things like disordered eating. All in all, I’m not a huge fan of restrictions at this age except around sugar and processed food, and steering clear of allergens if any. What I like, or rather what I aim for, is for my kids to eat a variety of foods, beyond the colors of the rainbow; whole foods-based dishes and food textures from a range of cultures, with or without meat.
Of course, I’m not offering my children 7-Eleven hot dogs. Much meat is unethical and the product of factory farms. As parents, we rightfully worry about chickens injected with hormones, for example. If meat is part of the family diet, the best thing to do is find small local farms you trust where the cows and chickens are happy and source quality meat from them. I’m lucky in that I live in the countryside close to farms like this. This might be what people consider “ethical meat eating.” Even a local organic coop or trusted butcher trumps a generic grocery store chain.
A good friend of mine from Russia, who I consider extremely well-informed when it comes to nutrition, is all about a whole foods diet with no processed food and carefully sourced meat in judicious amounts. She uses the organs and bones of the animal as much as possible in her cooking, especially the liver which is high in vitamin A. While not everyone can stomach this, she says conventional meat can be gut-inflammatory because it has soy and GMO corn. “Food should be healthy and not poisonous, but the American food system is compromised–it’s backed against us which makes the job of finding healthy nutritious food difficult,” she says, adding that on top of misinformation and mislabeling and ubiquitous canola oil, “If you’re not a food scientist, you’re screwed.”
At large, the American diet is too meat-heavy and—beyond the moral implications of eating meat— there is arguably not much benefit from eating generic meat. Eating too many animal proteins can cause inflammation and cause constipation. Many Americans mistakenly believe they need to eat meat every day, and worse, at every meal (we were never meant to eat like that). I have to wonder if this is why there is a constipation epidemic among children (I’m proud to say my children are great poopers). The dairy industry is also troublesome on so many levels (which again, leads us back to local farms). Let’s get our kids interested in where food comes from; gardening has really been amazing for my little ones. Growing their own tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers makes them more likely to eat them.
On the other hand, knowing where food comes from can have repercussions. After reading a recent book on farms from the library, my daughter linked meatballs to cows, and –with a very sad expression on her face—remarked: “I don’t want to eat this because I love animals.” Fair enough. I am not going to lie to her. If she does not want to eat meat, that is her choice—who am I to force her?
Making the Best Choices Possible
In researching this, I noticed that it is easy for mothers to get defensive about their choices. This is what I know: every parent is just trying to make the decision that they feel is the best for their kids, and that will look different in every family because we have different backgrounds and different experiences and beliefs. Motherhood is full of anxiety about so many different things—for me, I don’t want my children not getting enough nutrition to be one of them.
In conclusion, to answer my question: should we impose our vegetarian or vegan diets on our children? I would say no. I think restrictions (besides on sugar and packaged processed foods) are not ideal, yet neither is demonizing certain foods (like sugar), so one has to be careful. For children, we need to offer them a largely plant-based, whole foods diet with healthy fats and organic fruits and vegetables, with lots of good quality water, carefully-sourced dairy and carefully-sourced meat in small quantities, which they or may not eat (and a multivitamin and an omega supplement to cover all the bases). Children should be eating foods that are as close to nature as possible, (whole foods), and they should eat a variety of them.
To eat this way, to avoid all the conveniences of fast food or frozen food, is time-consuming and expensive. Do I do it perfectly? No way. Some nights the kids have Annie’s Mac N Cheese, french fries from the air fryer, rice and beans, avocado toast or grilled cheeses (these are all foods they love). We do have sugar sometimes (I mean it’s hidden everywhere), but I want them to have a “normal childhood” with chocolate and ice cream. That’s life and I try to “give myself grace.” I often remind myself that I grew up eating Pop Tarts, Fruit Rollups, Doritos and Fruity Pebbles as snacks and I’m having babies naturally in my forties. My niece, now 13, is already taller than me and 100% healthy even though the first decade of her life I never saw her eating anything but Kraft Mac N Cheese and strawberry ice cream (in spite of both her parents being great cooks who tried to get her to eat plenty of other foods).
In the end, having anxiety around what your kids eat, or how they eat, doesn’t help anyone, especially them.
