Raising vegan children - it's possible and thankfully, for now, still legal!

Earlier this month, a bill was proposed by an Italian politician, Elvira Savino, to prevent Italian parents from enforcing a vegan diet on their children.  Savino claims that this is due to the fact that a vegan diet is “reckless and dangerous eating behaviour”, and is also “devoid of essential elements for healthy and balanced growth”.  Should the bill come into force, parents who do impose a vegan diet on their children could be punished by a year in jail.

To be honest, there is so much wrong with this whole proposed bill that I find it hard to know where to start.  So I’ll start with some expert opinions in the area.  Firstly, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world’s largest organisation of food and nutrition experts, state that, with appropriate food choices, a vegan diet can be adequate for children at all ages. In fact, in their position paper, they go so far as to say that “appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases”. 

Closer to home, the British Dietetics Association are currently working on a project to bring plant-based nutrition information to every community in the UK.  It is their aim to “ensure that medical professionals and service providers know that well-planned plant-based, vegan-friendly diets can be devised to support healthy living at every age and life-stage”.

Another well respected doctor, Joel Fuhrman, M.D., who specialises in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods, states in his book ‘Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right’, that “the addition of fortified soy milks and tofu, beans, and green vegetables assures complete nutrition for toddlers and children on vegetarian and vegan diets”.  Furthermore, and perhaps something the Italian parliament should give some thought to, Fuhrman also states that “the omnivorous diet most children consume today is particularly dangerous to their future health”. 

So when the experts in the field of nutrition and dietetics are supportive of a vegan diet, what is the purpose of Savino proposing a bill of this kind? Well, in my opinion, publicity.  And it has worked.  A lot of people have been talking about it, and a lot of international press has picked up on the bill and discussed some further supposed evidence to support her wide-sweeping statements about the dangers of a vegan diet.  All this does is spread fear and doubt and may even lead some people dismissing the idea of a vegan diet due to the controversy.

In reality, the point that should be made is that children’s diets, in general, should be well-planned.  So if vegan diets can support healthy living, then why should we not encourage and support parents to feed their children this diet? As long as they provide for essential vitamins and minerals such as Vitamin B12, Iodine and DHA fatty acids, which are harder (but not impossible) to obtain from plant sources, then there really are no issues?

On the other side of the coin, what happens when children don’t receive a well-planned omnivorous diet? So they eat meat and drink milk, but also suffer from childhood obesity and type-2 diabetes? They are at risk of future heart disease, strokes and other serious health issues but under this new proposed bill, Italian government would have no issues? Shameful!

We’ve come a long way in Ireland in recent years when it comes to promoting healthy living. Most schools have a no junk food policy, breastfeeding rates are slowly but steadily on the increase, and more “made from scratch” meals are being consumed.  But we still have a long way to go.  Fast food outlets such as McDonald’s should be banned from promoting their food to children, marketing of high sugar content food and drinks should not be allowed, and children should be given proper nutrition education in schools – we need to eat to survive so why shouldn’t it feature as strongly on the curriculum as geography or maths??

Whether you choose to raise your children as vegan or not, it shouldn’t matter.  What does matter is that children are given the necessary ingredients to grow to their full potential, to live a happy and healthy, disease-free life, and to prosper.  Parents who do all they can to provide a well-planned, nutritious diet should be praised and those who resort to serving everything with a long shelf life should be re-educated.  Forget about jail time, nutrition education would be more beneficial to all.