The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Eating for Kids - M.s.j., Dana Villamagna [4]
Part 1
The Basics of Raising a Vegan Child
No doubt about it, a well-balanced vegan diet is healthful for children. But there are still many myths surrounding veganism, as well as a lot of positive information that never sees the light of mainstream media. Once you read the facts about the health advantages of a vegan diet for kids and the veg-positive truths hiding behind the negative myths, you will be even more confident about your food choices.
Part 1 covers the basics of raising a vegan child. Find out how you can identify your own family’s views on vegan issues, large and small. Explore ways to handle situations unique to vegan kids. And learn even more reasons to be proud of raising a vegan child.
Chapter 1
Vegan Advantages for Kids
In This Chapter
◆ Health plusses for vegan kids
◆ The environmental benefits of being vegan
◆ It’s about more than just the food
Savvy parents know simply assuming children will grow up strong, slim, and disease-free in today’s world full of fast-food, TV commercials, and environmental toxins is much too naive. The $10 billion-a-year, kid-targeted food and beverage marketing industry’s goal is to get kids to ask for fast food and junk food. Parents, we need to tell our kids what these marketers are up to and where that “desirable” food actually comes from. We need to provide alternative messages to our kids about what’s really good for them. We need to show them how eating healthy—and especially eating vegan—can taste good, or our kids will drift away into a sea of fatty burgers, shakes, and fries with so many other twenty-first century American children.
Even the federal government, which has set a rather sad but seemingly achievable goal of “only” a 5 percent obesity rate among American children, admits we’re losing the battle. The most recent federal survey (2003 to 2006) of American children’s health showed that about 17 percent of American children ages 6 to 19 are obese—that’s 30 pounds over ideal body weight.
Many families choose a vegan lifestyle for ethical, compassionate, and environmental reasons, no doubt. But if protection against this obesity epidemic and overall improved health for your child isn’t one of the driving forces for your choice, don’t be surprised if it’s one of the side effects.
The Health Benefits of Being Vegan
A plant-based, animal-product-free diet can’t quell all health threats, but it can certainly reduce the risk many of them pose to your child’s short- and long-term health outlook. Vegan diets have been shown to reduce the incidence of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, certain types of cancer, and obesity-related illnesses.
If you follow a few important but simple guidelines (especially taking care to supply necessary vitamin B12), your child’s nutritional needs can easily be met without the inclusion of animal products—all the while setting her on a much wider road to life-long health with fewer pitfalls than her meat-, dairy-, and egg-consuming playmates.
That’s So Vegan
A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control places the number of vegetarian kids at 0.5 percent of American youth. Other studies cite the number of vegetarian American kids ages 8 to 18 at about 3 percent. Compare that with stats that show 17 to 30 percent of American youth are overweight to obese, and it’s clear we’ve got a long way to go to get the numbers right.
Kids Are Naturally Healthy, Right?
It’s shocking, but true: doctors are now diagnosing children as young as 4 years old with obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, and musculoskeletal problems. In the past, these problems showed up in 40- to 50-year-olds, not kids.
Who’s to blame? Considering that parents are largely who decide what children eat at least through the tween years, when kids have