Meat and dairy aren’t essential for a child’s development
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Babies born into vegan or vegetarian families may be slightly underweight in early infancy, but seem to catch up to their omnivore peers by age 2.
Official advice generally states that a well-planned vegan diet – rich in vegetables, beans, whole grains and fortified products – can provide all the nutrients needed for good health. But it can still be very difficult to meet a child’s growing nutritional needs, with veganism being linked to amino acid and protein deficiencies.
When it comes to the pros and cons of veganism at a young age, small studies have provided conflicting results. To address the issue on a wider scale, Kerem Avital at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and her colleagues have now analysed data on 1.2 million babies collected from national family care centres in Israel between 2014 and 2023, following records of each baby’s length, weight and head circumference from birth to 24 months.
The team then compared those growth rates to the type of diet that the babies’ parents reported having when the infants were about 6 months old. The vast majority of the households said they were omnivorous, with just 1.2 per cent self-reporting as vegetarian and 0.3 per cent as vegan.
But this still accounted for about 18,000 babies in the vegetarian and vegan families. “Because of the massive scale of this study, even a low percentage represents a large enough number of children to be statistically significant and provide reliable evaluations,” says Tomer Avnon at Tel Aviv University in Israel, who wasn’t involved in the study.
In the first 60 days of life, the babies’ length, head circumference and rates of restricted growth and development were similar across all diet groups. Babies in meat-free families, however – particularly those in vegan households – were slightly more likely to be underweight. Being overweight was rare overall, but tended to be less common in the vegetarian and vegan households.
By around age 2, those differences had largely evened out, with growth measures converging across all three groups. Restricted growth was more common among the toddlers from vegetarian and vegan families, but the differences were small and not statistically significant, says Avital. The researchers accounted for factors that could influence the results, such as income, maternal age and breastfeeding.
“The results are quite heartening,” says Avnon. “It is deeply reassuring to see large-scale data confirming that children of vegetarian and vegan mothers can expect a healthy developmental future.”
The study falls in line with medical observations that babies born small for their gestational age usually “catch up” later on, says Avnon. It should also provide reassurance that meat-free diets can support healthy early growth, he says, but points out that the diets were self-reported by the parents, which could affect the accuracy of the results. “Specifically, this study lacks a precise, day-to-day evaluation of the child’s actual nutrition during their early years, which remains a critical factor in long-term development,” he says.
Zulfiqar Bhutta at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, questions whether the slight variations in restricted growth that the researchers found might be a cause for concern down the line. “The small but appreciable differences in growth between the three groups could well be relevant long term, especially given evidence from elsewhere that vegan diets are associated with lower bone mineral density and micronutrient status,” he says.
He therefore cautions against interpreting the findings as reassurance that vegan and vegetarian diets are always appropriate in early life, especially in parts of the world where malnutrition is prevalent.
Although the study was carried out in Israel, Avital says the results probably apply to countries with similar incomes and accessible healthcare, such as the UK. Bhutta now wants to see larger studies that more accurately collect information on diet, as well as factors like parental height.
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