Nutrition Issues with Vegan Children

 

A study by researchers the the University of Helsinki in Finland and published in EMBO Molecular Medicine concluded that vegan diets do not provide very young children (the median age of study participants was 3 1/2 years) with enough of certain key vitamins and nutrients. 

Vegan diets often include supplementation with vitamins D and B-12 as well as certain minerals like iodine that can be challenging to get enough of from solely plant-based foods. Supplementing usually resolves the issue. But the study found that even with supplementation children on strict vegan diets had significantly lower vitamin D levels than did children eating a more traditional omnivore diet.
the vegan children also had lower levels of vitamin A.

On the positive side, vegan children had higher levels of folate (folate - aka vitamin B-9 - is important in red blood cell formation and for healthy cell growth and function) and lower levels of LDL cholesterol.

The study calls for larger studies before early-life vegan diet can be recommended as a healthy and fully nourishing diet for young children, despite its many health-promoting effects in adults and suggests that the metabolic effects of vegan diet in adults cannot be generally extrapolated to children.

This is a preliminary result and not a call to avoid a vegan diet for young children. But caution should be exercised to ensure that they receive a supplement regimen that compensates for the observed deficiencies. Also, the study results apply only to young children and not to older children or adults.