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“Don’t kids need milk to be healthy?”
Humans are the only creatures that drink milk from the mother of another
species. It’s as unnatural for a child to drink the milk of a cow as it is
for a dog to nurse from a giraffe! Human children have no nutritional
requirements for cow’s milk and grow up healthy and strong without it.
Cow’s milk (and the products made from it) is laced with foreign,
frequently allergy-inciting, bovine protein and often contains hydrocarbon
pesticides and other chemical contaminants, as well as health-endangering
saturated fat. Clinical experience suggests that cow’s milk is linked to
numerous common health problems (runny noses, allergies, ear infections,
recurrent bronchitis, asthma, etc.) that often keep people returning to
their doctors’ offices, instead of to their jobs or classrooms. Parents
should feel good about giving their children the many nutritious, tasty,
nondairy alternatives instead.
Michael Klaper, M.D., nutritional expert and author of Pregnancy,
Children, and the Vegan Diet
“Well-planned vegan diets are appropriate for
all stages of the lifecycle, including during pregnancy, lactation,
infancy, childhood, and adolescence”
—The American Dietetic Association’s position
paper on vegetarianism
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Good Nature, Vegetarian
Living
Vegetarian Diets for Pregnancy and
Children
A healthy plant-based diet is the perfect solution for these vital
stages of life.
Pregnant women, nursing mothers, infants,
and children benefit from a vegetarian diet. All are especially
sensitive to dietary dangers, so it makes extra good sense for them to
avoid the fats, drugs, hormones, pesticides, and other pitfalls of meat
and dairy products.
Pregnant Women
Vegan women are generally healthier than
their carnivorous and dairy consuming counterparts and are therefore
already well on their way to trouble-free, easy pregnancies.
A study of 1,700 pregnancies at The Farm, a large vegan community in
Tennessee, showed that vegan mothers-to-be have a record of safety that
would delight obstetricians.
Only one in 100 women delivered their babies by Caesarean section, and
in 20 years, there was only one case of pre-eclampsia (a condition
involving hypertension, fluid retention, urinary protein loss, and
excessive weight gain), which occurs in at least 2 percent of all
pregnancies in the U.S. Other studies have found similar results.
Special Needs During Pregnancy
All pregnant women need to consume extra
protein. There’s plenty to be found in plant foods such as tofu, tempeh,
beans, nut butters, and mock meats like veggie burgers and soy sausage,
and these foods don’t come with the artery-clogging cholesterol and
saturated fat found in animal products.
For calcium, pregnant women should eat plenty of green leafy vegetables
such as broccoli or kale. The calcium from most green vegetables is
actually more absorbable than the calcium in cow’s milk. Another reason
to avoid cow’s milk: The protein in it can cross the placenta and even
enter a woman’s breast milk, possibly sparking the production of
antibodies that lead to insulin dependent diabetes. Other plant foods
rich in calcium include soy milk, almonds, figs, blackstrap molasses,
sesame seeds, tahini, and calcium fortified fruit juices.
Expectant mothers also should consume plenty of iron, folic acid, and
vitamins, including D and B12—all of which a well-balanced vegan diet
and routine prenatal vitamins will provide.
Vegetarian Children
It’s never too early to learn healthy
eating habits. According to a study in The New England Journal of
Medicine, at least 60 percent of children and young adults have early
athero-sclerotic damage.
Wholesome plant-based foods make for strong, healthy bodies with a great
head start in life.
In the seventh edition of his world famous Baby and Child Care,
America’s most respected pediatrician, the late Dr. Benjamin Spock,
recommends that parents raise their children on a vegan diet. “We now
know that there are harmful effects of a meaty diet,” wrote Spock.
“Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather
than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to
develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some forms
of cancer ... I no longer recommend dairy products ... [T]here was a
time when cow’s milk was considered very desirable. But research, along
with clinical experience, has forced doctors and nutritionists to
rethink this recommendation.” Many children are subtly or violently
allergic to milk proteins. Sniffles and intestinal distress dismissed as
colds and colic can actually be signs of lactose intolerance.
Pediatricians often find that chronic ear infections and respiratory
problems are aggravated when milk is part of a child’s diet.
Drinking milk has also been linked to asthma and intestinal bleeding and
is suspected of triggering juvenile diabetes, a disease that causes
blindness and other serious effects. Some children’s bodies reject cow’s
milk protein as a foreign substance and produce high levels of
antibodies to fend off this “invader.”
Unfortunately, these antibodies also destroy the cells that produce
insulin in the pancreas, leading to diabetes.
Children can get all the calcium they need from plant foods like
broccoli, chickpeas, almonds, black beans, tahini, dried figs, collards,
kale, cornbread, tofu, and fortified soy milk and orange juice—without
the risk of developing serious health problems that could plague them
for a lifetime.
Expert Advice
All the protein and other nutrients
needed for growth and health are found in plant products, so don’t feel
pressured by well-meaning relatives or uninformed doctors. There are
excellent books written by physicians and parents that make it easy to
follow good examples:
- Dr. Attwood’s Low-Fat Prescription for
Kids by Charles Attwood, M.D. (Penguin Books, 1996)
- Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care (7th
edition) by Benjamin Spock, M.D., and
Steven J. Parker, M.D. (Pocket Books, 1998)
- Pregnancy, Children, and the Vegan
Diet by Michael Klaper, M.D. (Gentle World,
Inc., 1987)
- Vegetarian Baby by Sharon Yntema (McBooks
Press, 1991)
- Vegetarian Children by Sharon Yntema (McBooks
Press, 1995)
- The Vegetarian Mother and Baby by Rose
Elliot (Pantheon Books, 1997)
- Vegetarian Pregnancy by Sharon Yntema
(McBooks Press, 1994)
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