Docs: Vegetarian Infants?

Factual Questions
1

So Baby Kate, by her own design, hardly eats any meat. With coaxing she’ll eat some chicken and sometimes some red meat but she’d much rather eat fruits and vegetables. She’s very partial to oranges, olives and tomatos.

But it got me wondering if there’s any potential health hazards to it. Clearly she shouldn’t be eating exclusively meat. But doesn’t a growing 2 year old need protein and fat? She started out off the charts on height and weight and now, at 2 years 8 months she’s down in the 20th percentile.

So what’s the scoop? Anyone have any info on vegetarian infants?

2

Does she drink milk? Eat eggs? Cheese? Those things have protein. Bear in mind that a “serving size” for a toddler is about 1 tablespoon per year of age. I believe that studies show that toddlers who are given a choice of foods (not including excessive sweets) pick appropriate diets for themselves.

A 2 year old probably sees the doctor regularly. Ask the doctor if her growth history is normal. Babies who are big at birth are not necessarily destined to be big throughout their lives. My children both departed from their birth percentiles almost immediately, found a new place on the chart, and then followed the same percentile line through toddlerhood.

The 20th percentile is not a bad place to be. One fifth of normal children are smaller than your daughter. And the charts are not based on children in third-world countries suffering from starvation.

3

I have several sets of friends raising vegetarian children. They are healthy. Dr. Spock late in life held the controversial position that everyone should be vegan, including children.

A case can be made that a vegetarian diet is healthier. And a case can certainly be made that the average American eats far too much meat.

4

Oh, I certainly agree with that. I just find it odd that she self-skews so far in one direction. She’s certainly healthy enough.

She does drink milk (though she prefers juice of almost any type) for dinner.

5

De-emphasize juice. Its no more than sugar water, and gives nothing but empty calories, and a few trace vitamins that are easily gotten elsewhere.

Infants should be on breast milk. If this is not possible, then formula. Once weaned, a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet is not a problem if it’s balanced. A healthy Vegan diet is very hard to achieve for a growing child. Not impossible, but hard.

But don’t let the child control the diet. Offer healthy choices and let the kid decide which choice to opt for.

QtM, MD

6

She needs some protein and some fat, but not much. There are well documented cases of kids who have been harmed by parents feeding them fad diets, but those have been pretty extreme diets, not just meatless diets.

Are you sure that she is not anemic? Her diet sounds like it could be low on iron. In addition, there have been cases of people with iron deficiency anemia who developed cravings for foods not unlike her preferences as well as for ice chips. (Does she by any chance like to chew on ice? I think its a bad idea for a child to get ice chips which are easy to choke on but I’m asking just in case she has had experience with ice.)

7

Thanks, Qadgop.

We put it in front of her. She chooses what she wants to eat of it.

Example: Fuddruckers over the weekend (hamburger joint in the area…I don’t know if it’s national). We get her a cheeseburger at her request. She wants it topped with lettuce, tomatos, onions and pickles. We do so.

She then proceeds to take off the bun and eat the veggies and pick off the cheese.

Surreal, to me. I’ve never seen a small child dodge hamburgers and french fries. But she does.

8

Be grateful - it’s easier to deal with this skew than the “veggies, yuchh!” stuff that other parents have to deal with. She’s off to a good start if she likes fruits and veggies so much.

One thing Qadgop forgot to mention - at age 2, her milk should be whole milk. Toddlers need the extra fat and calories. After another year or so, you can switch her to 2% or skim if you prefer it.

9

Is it perhaps something about the texture of the hamburger and french fries that she doesn’t like? Are they greasy (feels yucky to her fingers, maybe) or too firmly cooked? Does she like crumbled bits of ground beef that have been cooked, or mashed potatoes instead of fries?

Depending on where you live, perhaps you could find some pre-marinated tofu that she might like - cut it into small cubes and see if she eats it. I think I’ve seen some in a tomato-type of marinade that might taste good. It’s high in protein and might be more in line with what she finds appealing.

10

At least you caught on.

As a child (and an adult) I just plain didn’t like meat. I didn’t like the taste. I didn’t like the texture. I’d rather not eat it.

My family, however, ate a good old American working class food. Lots of pork chops and meatloaf. Meat in everything. In their eyes I was an impossibly picky eater because I hated everything they cooked. I spent a lot of my childhood choking down my dinner while being berated for being so picky and ungrateful.

I was a skinny, sickly child. When I finally realized what was going on and became vegetarian, I gained forty pounds and stopped getting sick because I was finally eating real meals.

11

She does drink whole milk. No worries there.

I was a ‘veggies, yuck!’ type in my carefree youth (and still am to some extent). I suppose that’s why I find it so odd.

She doesn’t express any real opinion for why she doesn’t eat the meat. She just doesn’t often do it.

Let me be clear: she will eat some meat. But never a whole lot and frequently none at all.

12

With my #1, when she was a Toddler/Two, we discovered the hard way that whole milk was filling her up so she wasn’t hungry for anything else. So we switched her to skim milk and suddenly she started eating Real Food, too.

Also, two out of my three at various points in their preschool careers were on the “low percentile of weight gain” charts, and so far they’ve both turned out fine, one’s a normal-sized college freshman and the other’s a slightly vertically-challenged 7th grader, but there are genes for vertically-challenged on both sides of the family, so it wasn’t her diet. And she wasn’t the one who only drank whole milk, anyway.

The point is, those charts are just a tool, particularly to help truly clueless new parents. But if Baby Kate is being allowed to choose for herself from a varied and nutritious menu, and she’s not just filling up on juice and milk (also, chocolate milk is another pitfall that most people don’t realize can fill up a kid’s tummy in no time flat), then I wouldn’t worry too much about the numbers.

13

Dominic is 7 and has never had any kind of meat.

I recommend a book called Vegetarian Baby as a good source of nutritional information and such about babies who don’t eat meat.

14

I wouldn’t eat meat when I was little - only fish.

The same is true now. Perhaps yer daughter is like me, and just doesn’t like meat.

My neice, on the other hand, will eat as much meat as she can get her hands on. I’m sure she would eat an entire ham if my brother would let her.

Blech.

15

Chinabambina, aged 2.5 years, prefers veggies generally. She’s a formula hog and simply loves cheese. The Sear’s baby book said the most important thing was feeding babies/toddlers/kids a balanced week. Don’t sweat each meal, just try make sure the mix is reasonably close for the week.

16

Your question reminds me of a quote I came agross for a research paper that went something like…
“Put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If he eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car”
Doesn’t really mean much. Cute, still.

17

I’ve always thought that as long as your child is “bright eyed and bushy tailed” and rarely gets sick, then their diet must be fine.

18

Millions don’t eat meat for religious reasons. Neither do their babies. Miraculously, they survive.