Plant-Based Diet:Growing Kids As Vegetarians Part I

Mmmm, vegetarian food is so yummy! Finn :-)

 My blogged Plant Based Diet series is meant to share with others my family's journey on a vegetarian diet & why we have chosen this. We do not think we are better than our meat eating family & friends. This is what we feel is best for our family. Reading my thoughts is strictly voluntarily. :-)
 When Mara was three days old, a friend emphatically told her, that she wasn't going to know what she was missing by being raised a vegetarian (steak was the subject). Actually, at seven years old, Mara does know what she is missing & she couldn't be more pleased. It's kind of funny some of the looks or comments you get when people learn you don't eat meat & very little dairy or egg products. One of the most common remarks is, "How do you get your protein?" followed by, "What do you eat?". Interesting how the "developed" countries like the USA have a super high meat consumption per person & heart disease is one of the number one killers. Countries, that don't eat near the amount of meat, have far less heart disease. But more on the logistics later. Before getting into the "kids" portion, I will briefly share my journey into a plant based diet. Growing up, I was raised eating a typical high meat diet. Very early on, I remember eating hamburgers from Burgerville on Sunday nights after church, sitting in my highchair in our small house on Railroad Avenue. (This post isn't intended to make jabs at my parents for their dietary upbringing so please keep that in mind. My parents did they best they knew & did a pretty fine job!) An entire hamburger patty is way too much meat for a small child. The protein overload on the system is not healthy but more on serving sizes later. As I continued to grow, meat was a staple of  dinner every day & often also at lunch & occasionally breakfast, also. Thankfully, I never cared for bacon & did not eat it growing up. My family didn't serve pork very much because my dad knew it is full of toxins. I am thankful for that. The dogs were frequent beneficiaries of unwanted meat at the dinner table. Fat, gristle, hamburger & anything undercooked always bothered me so I would slip it to the dogs. After I turned 14, I started having abdominal pain after eating too much fat & protein. When I cut back on the meat in my diet, my pains got better. Around age 16, I started experimenting with a meatless diet, much to the frustration of my folk. It wasn't until a few years later, that I had the encouragement around me to go 100% meatless. Dropping most other animal products came later.During my pregnancy with both Mara & Gracen, I maintained excellent hemoglobin levels (the iron in meat comes from the blood but it's readily available in non-blood sources, also!). Finn's pregnancy was harder on my body for various reasons & my iron dropped but it went back up soon after his birth. Mara, Gracen & Finn are different than a lot of their peers, who were started on a meat based diet early on, often as infants (meat is exceptionally unsuitable for an infant's system). People ask me what they eat. They eat lots of good foods & being a vegetarian hasn't been a problem to them. The girls are old enough to know why our family doesn't eat meat. We passed a restaurant last night & I asked Mara if she would like to stop in sometime to eat. She said, "No, I wouldn't. It looks like mostly meat is served in there." Gracen was recently offered ham at her preschool. She turned it down. Etiquette regarding how my children respond to others eating meat is something my husband & I work diligently with our kids on. They are being trained (I think Mara is fully trained!), that it isn't okay to say anything derogatory about what someone is eating or has in their kitchen. There is to be nothing said about the smell, color or how bad it can be for you. We have experienced derogatory remarks to us about our diet & although not appreciated, the girls are being taught to ignore them. Thankfully, more & more people are realizing the joy of a plant-based diet so my children have some veggie buddies. Here are three questions I have been asked frequently about raising my children on a plant-based diet: 1. How do you make sure they get adequate protein? Statistics show, that most Americans get too much protein every day. Excessive protein, especially animal protein is hard on your kidneys as well as leeches calcium from the bones. The serving size for meat is a deck of cards. This is for an adult. How many people eat a deck sized serving? How many kids do that when their serving size should be much smaller? My children eat a broad variety of foods & get their protein needs met easily & adequately. Many people may not know, that protein is found in plants, not just animal flesh & products. Since their brains are still developing, my children eat limited organic eggs & am working on eliminating  cheese from their diets. 2. How do you make sure your kids get adequate iron? Supplement with an iron supplement? My children are all tested on a semi-annual basis for hemoglobin & have never been even close to low. They do not take an iron supplement in any form. In fact, I didn't take iron with my pregnancies although I probably needed to towards the end with Finn. A plant based diet adequately provides enough iron. 3. What will you do if your kids want to become meat eaters when they turn 18. My goal is to raise my children the best I can, present them with the facts, educate them & then let them make their own choices when they are of age. Even if they choose to become meat eaters, it will be a good feeling to know that they were shielded from animal flesh toxins, antibiotics, & excessive fat & cholesterol for their formative years. On closing, two observations that I have made from having babies & toddlers drinking my vegetarian milk is that dirty diapers do not have as strong as an odor as meat eating babies' diapers, also when they are off milk but not eating meat (I have changed & smelled plenty!) & that spit up breast milk has a milder smell than milk from meat eating mothers' milk I have smelled. Vegetarian milk has a slightly different composition from conventional milk. At the end of my Plant Based Diet series, I plan on posting some sites where you can reference some of my vegetarian information. This series, like all of my blogs are MY VIEWS. Some people have different views. I respect yours. Please respect mine. Please check out Forks Over Knives. My family has a copy of it & would love to loan it out to any interested parties.