JFH (and other veggies/vegans)

[laurack]

I'm curious about people who are vegetarian/vegan and what they feed/plan to feed baby. If you are vegan, will you only feed LO vegan food? same for vegetarians, would you cook meat for the baby, or plan to raise them on a meatless diet?

We have one friend who is vegan and they don't serve meat to the kids, but very occasionally the kids will eat some when they are somewhere else, but they discourage it. They do however allow dairy and eggs but the kids eat mostly tofu for protein.

JFH I saw you mention giving WCM to kai and it made me wonder about this!

[muppetinma]

I'm a vegetarian but DH is not. I plan on raising Andrew as a meat eater unless he chooses otherwise when he gets older. But, I feel like he gets a more well-rounded diet because of our opposing views. He certainly won't get meat every day and will get tofu and other high protein alternatives regularly.

[jfh]

DH and I are both vegetarian and I'm mostly vegan. We won't have meat for Kai, but right now he gets eggs and yogurt. I've really struggled with it. I know babies can be perfectly healthy on a vegan diet - I have many friends who have done it. But it does take more planning, and right now I don't have time to make sure he's getting everything he needs from plant sources. So the goal is to base his diet on plants but supplement with small amounts of animal products. I'd really like to avoid WCM but I haven't researched alternatives yet.

[erniebufflo]

We are currently mostly veg and eat only sustainably raised meat. We are slowly headed to veggie town, I think, but I will never give up cheese and eggs and butter. The girls will eat what and how we do, as it's a decision made based on deeply held values. Feeding them things we don't eat would be like raising them in a different religion for us. One thing I know we aren't doing is cows milk after formula. Currently researching what we will do instead.

[charlielove]

I'm a vegetarian and DH is not, but he never chooses to eat meat at home and very rarely does when we are out. I only cook vegetarian at home and will coninue to do that as the girls get older. DD1 has had chicken, turkey and fish less than 5 times in her life, but I was okay with her trying it. I'm not okay with her having red meat, hotdogs, etc. which has come up at pre-school because they do occasionally serve things with meat. Fortunately, they are very good about making sure she gets a different snack.

As she gets older I'm not going to stop her from eating it outside of the home, I mean, when she is 16 it's going to pretty much be up to her. Or at a sleepover when she is 10, I think I'll be okay with it. We'll see when we get there.

[claralou]

Jan 3, 2013 10:19:45 GMT -5 erniebufflo said:

We are currently mostly veg and eat only sustainably raised meat. We are slowly headed to veggie town, I think, but I will never give up cheese and eggs and butter. The girls will eat what and how we do, as it's a decision made based on deeply held values. Feeding them things we don't eat would be like raising them in a different religion for us. One thing I know we aren't doing is cows milk after formula. Currently researching what we will do instead.

This exactly for us, too. Only difference is that I'm still on the fence with WCM. Need to do some more research there before making a decision.