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From:	Leslie (cpe-69-76-1-3.natnow.res.rr.com)
Subject:	Re: Skinny Kids and veganism
Date:	December 21, 2007 at 7:46 am PST

In Reply to: Skinny Kids and veganism posted by Linda tadler on December 18, 2007 at 7:22 am:

You might check out the paper by the ADA on veg diets for kids, they go through every nutritional element in this paper and list sources for that nutrient. They also state that children that are veg grow a bit slower than their omni counterparts but that is not a bad thing -- they may reach puberty a bit later (good, especially for girls) but end up in the same place, essentially. Well, sort of, many, many omni kids today are overweight and already experiencing diabetes, also raising their risk of heart disease early in life.

You might also check out Virginia Messina, she has a book on raising vegetarian children.

Also keep in mind a couple of things, we are used to seeing heavier people, when one eats a whole foods plant-based diet, their weight settles in a place where they should really be. That may mean less weight than the general population, but it is so much healthier and is actually more "normal" biologically.

Fat should actually be kept to around a 20% level, which is pretty much impossible when eating lots of animal products, they are loaded with fat and the worst kind, saturated fat. Many plants are also high in fat but you still really don't want to exceed the 20% figure after age 2, because a higher fat diet is linked to many health disorders. But it's easy to overdo fat even on plants. Soy products contain a fair amount of fat. Hemp milk has healthy fats and is delicious, creamy and thick. As mentioned, avocados and nuts are excellent sources of fat.

Just be sure the food your kids eat is more whole and less processed food. Processed food such as chips, etc, is empty food. You want the food your kids eat to count towards nutrition -- that means the less processed, the better.

Some kids will balk at changes in their diet, you can take it slow and find places to include these "new" foods, like making smoothies with almond, hemp or soy milk instead of cow's milk. You are doing them a great favor to get them off cow's milk products, though, they are linked to so many disorders, including chronic ear infections. I swear, too, that once I quit dairy I reduced my own incidence of colds from once or twice a year to once every five to seven years. There are great advantages to using alternative.

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