Will the evidence linked below this market change how I feed my vegetarian toddler?
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My 15month old daughter has a vegetarian diet, but I'm open to the possibility that we should feed her more meat/dairy/supplements than we currently do since the lack of protein or other nutrients might have LT cognitive or health consequences.
Current diet:
lots of pasta/rice/bread/potatoes/fruit/butter/yogurt, some veg
breastfed (4times/night, decreasing slowly)
v occasional mussels (my attempt at ethical meat - she's not a fan and rarely eats any)
v occasional vit d/wellbaby multi-vit (she's not a fan, every 3 days?)
If anyone can link to evidence (blog posts, newspapers articles, academic papers, twitter threads) that results in us adding more meat, dairy products, or other kinds of supplements, the question will resolve to yes. Also resolves to yes if I update towards thinking it's worth it but her vegetarian mother vetos it.
What might change my mind/behaviour:
- Good empirical evidence. I'm not a biologist/medic but I work in research and understand the basics of study design and statistics and have authored a Cochrane review. I'm sceptical of some observational nutritional epidemiology claims. Appreciate work by George Davey Smith, Emily Oster and EBM advocates.
- Strong first-principles arguments. I won't put her in hard shoes because of Richard Wrangham and am more relaxed about sleeping less because of Alexey Guzey.
- Peoples trades on what will change my mind/behaviour.
Mar 2, 1:40pm: Three clarifications:
(1) She occasionally eats lentils, tofu, quorn, impossible burgers, cheese and eggs - thanks for the suggestions.
(2) Only links to convincing studies/blogs etc indicating we should expect her to benefit from consuming more animal products (or supplements substituting something she would otherwise consume in animal products) will result in me resolving Yes.
(3) Feel free to also link to sources indicating *no* health benefits to increasing her meat products/supplement consumption: these may increase the chance I resolve to No and potentially decrease her current animal product intake.
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Fish oil capsules or oily fish.
My 4yo has been eating meat substitutes since weaning and had no trouble distinguishing mentally between "plant meat" that she eats and animal meat that other people eat. It's not carefully curated, she just eats what we eat and we tell her what it is in simple words.
I'm assuming this market resolves no if you end up feeding her different vegan food, but you could clarify that.
I’m not sure what you’re indifference point is between the harms of a non-veggie diet and your daughter’s health/well-being. Eg what probability of how many additional IQ points or QALYS would be needed for you to think that it is worth raising her in a way that immediately - and likely in the future - means she contributes more to animal suffering/climate change. But my suspicion is that the evidence isn’t currently strong enough to tip the balance. Re: supplements / alt meats etc I think this is more likely to change, but I’m guessing that the evidence here is similarly weak and perhaps the hassle of trying to get a toddler to take any extra vitamin shots will support the status quo.
I suspect fake meat could be better to wait to introduce until they can do enough abstraction to grok that there's an important difference from other meat adults are tracking, despite it looking and tasting very similar? It's different, growing up perceiving an activity as normal and later learning your experience was carefully curated so you'd never encounter the trade-off, vs. growing up with the experience of selecting activities with the trade-off in mind as normal.
Or maybe I'm typical minding how many competing, contradictory authorities most kids will have trying to feed them :P
You don't list any legumes or cheese! Those are important vegetarian protein sources. I am trying to raise my kids pescetarian and eventually caved on letting the older one have beef because it's so hard to get her to eat anything, but she loves tofu (especially very plain tofu), and also cheese. My little one doesn't obviously need to flex the diet yet so he's not on beef, but he loves peanut butter, and will just eat it with a spoon. Are you lacto-only or are eggs an option? Scrambled eggs are a really easy and customizable protein.
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