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◆ If a vegan baby is not breast-feeding, the only option in infant formula is soy formula. Parents should never use soy milk as infant formula.

◆ Introduce solid foods around the middle of the first year. Watch for signs of readiness like grabbing for food, hungriness after nursing, and loss of tongue thrust.

◆ Some of the healthiest foods can be choking hazards for babies and toddlers. Watch the size, shape, and consistency of the food you serve to your infant and toddler.

Chapter 6

Vegan Toddlers (1 to 3 Years)

In This Chapter

◆ Breast milk: it’s not just for babies

◆ Toddler feeding tips: what to avoid

◆ What busy toddlers need to thrive

◆ A toddler-appropriate meal plan

If a blur of light and sound twirls through your living room, darts under your bed, and squeals at your dinner table, it’s likely a toddler inhabits your home. These fast-moving, babbling, risk-taking creatures are tons of fun—and work—to have around the house.

Trying to catch and feed a toddler is a challenge unto itself. When you do catch the wriggling mass, it’s important to feed him the good, nutritious stuff because the toddler tongue is a palate in training. Feed him junk food, he’ll develop a taste for sweet, salty, fatty foods. Feed him natural, whole foods, and he’ll find artificial, refined foods far too sweet and fake tasting.

In this chapter, you catch up with your vegan toddler’s nutritional needs, identify his eating danger zones, and find out why breast-feeding into toddlerhood is the best health insurance you can’t buy, especially for vegan toddlers. We also include a sample meal plan created by an expert with The Vegetarian Resource Group. So lace up your running shoes—you’re in training to catch a toddler for dinner!

Breast Milk: Vegan Toddler Health Insurance

Fewer than 40 percent of American moms breast-feed their babies past the first few months of life. Only about 5 percent of moms breast-feed their toddlers to at least 18 months. This is unfortunate because the nutrition benefits and illness prevention breast milk provides go on far into toddlerhood.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set a modest goal of just 25 percent of American babies to be breast-fed to at least 1 year by 2010. Why does the federal government care that more babies breast-feed to a year or more? Because breast-fed babies save millions of health-care dollars, mean fewer lost days of work for their parents, and continue to save untold millions of dollars and thousands of lives from long-term illnesses far into adulthood. And that’s for both breast-fed children and their moms because breast-feeding also reduces illnesses such as female cancers in women.

That’s So Vegan

Vegan moms of breast-feeding vegan toddlers should continue to take a multivitamin that includes vitamin B12 and/or provide B12 supplementation for their toddler.

It’s clear: breast-feeding offers protection from both short-term illnesses like colds, ear infections, and allergies, and long-term chronic health problems like obesity, diabetes, and childhood cancers.

Perhaps as important as illness protection, breast-feeding provides a way to ensure that a busy toddler takes a break from his constant exploring to nurse, which boosts daily calorie intake. Breast milk contains about 20 calories per ounce of protein, healthy fats, and other nutrients; compare that to 15 calories in 1 ounce apple juice, which is simply sugar and contains no protein or healthy fats.

Sometimes, toddlers seem to go on eating strikes, where they consume next to nothing for days. Parents of breast-feeding toddlers worry much less through these phases because rarely will a breast-feeding toddler refuse to nurse, even when sick with a cold or stomach bug. Breast-feeding is a source of physical and emotional nourishment that allows them time to quiet down, refuel, and be close to mom so they can return to exploring, rested, tanked up nutritionally, and reassured