[DharmaDisciple]

I have been veggie since aged 11, and vegan since aged 18 ( I am now 30)

My 2 dd's (3 1/2 and 12 1/2) are not what I could call vegans and it is a real struggle now. Neither will eat any pulses and the only grain they like is rice. They will eat kidney beans, chick peas etc if I make them into bean burgers.

What I worry for them is their calcium and iron intakes. Especially as I belive it is when we are adults that nutritional problems may appear from our childhoods (eg osteoporosis).

Calcium- we have enriched soya milk (which the youngest has lots of) But my eldest doesn't touch the stuff. They will eat broccoli but not enough to get their required amount. Seeds again the youngest will have a small helping, the eldest won't. Tofu is eaten a few times a week. Yogurts they will sometimes eat. The vegan cheese is high in unnatural fat and is twice the price of veggie cheese.

Iron- very little they will eat that has iron in.

So I am wondering whether to go back to being veggie- they can have eggs, and the huge amount of cheeses and yogurts that are out there. Plus we can do baking with that in.

Dh has said to me- what about the animals? I I replied I care for them, but I also care for my children and their health- and worry for my eldest who is going through puberty now and needs the correct amount of nutrients.

Also- do you need to eat a plant protein with a grain to make it a complete protein?

Thank you xxxx
~Amanda~

 

[Erin Pavlina]

HI Amanda,

I know it can be tough making sure your vegan kids are getting all their nutrients. If being vegan is important to you, I think I can help you solve this problem.

First off, you don't need to eat complete proteins at every meal. the body will store the amino acids it receives and combine them with the other pieces when they come to make a complete protein.

Iron and calcium are indeed two important nutrients to get on the vegan diet. I don't care for rice or soy milk straight either, so I drink a lot of fortified juices. For example, calcium-fortified orange juice. Would your daughter be more interested in that?

Iron is found in many foods, not just the legume group. For example, a baked potato is high in iron. I'm sure you could find a list of high iron foods online or in a cookbook and see how much iron your kids are really getting.

You may want to consider supplementation with a vitamin. The Kid Bear vitamins are excellent. Go to www.kidbear.com for info on them. Totally vegan.

Going back to being veggie may not actually solve your problem. The high animal protein content in eggs, milk, cheese, etc. can leach calcium out of the bones, thus causing the very problems you're trying to avoid.

To get them to eat more of what you want, I would hide it in other foods. Instead of putting a big dollop of beans on their plate, maybe try making enchiladas. What I do is mix beans and organic brown rice with a little vegan cheese and enchilada sauce, then I cut up some whole wheat tortillas and layer that all in a casserole dish. Beans, tortillas, cheese, etc, until I get to the top and just put on the cheese. Bake and serve with vegan sour cream. It's extremely high in iron and my daughter loves the flavor.

A great cookbook for high iron stews that taste great is Lean and Luscious and Meatless by Bobbie Hinman and Millie Snyder. I would get that and start perusing the book for high iron and calcium recipes.

Good luck to you!

 

[mama2annabelle]

Amanda,

I recently switched from my vegan diet to one that includes eggs and occasional wild salmon. I did this because I was concerned about my DD's weight gain. She is just so tiny, I thought that adding more fat and protein to our diet would be beneficial. (Note: no one else was concerned about her weight, doctor included, I think I have just been overly paranoid about nutrition when it comes to my child.)

The eggs I get from a local health store which gets them from a local family. They hens are completly free range well cared for and just live in the family's backyard. I still would never buy eggs from a grocery store because of the way those hens are treated.

The fish, I am having a problem with. I really don't enjoy eating it, but have been making myself do it for DD. We started out with eating it 2 times a week, but it's down to once a week now just because I have such a hard time eating it. It actually makes my stomach upset. I am considering quitting the fish for myself, but DD LOVES it, so I will continue to make it for her and DH if I do quit.

 

[bebe luna]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mand I Also- do you need to eat a plant protein with a grain to make it a complete protein?

Hemp seeds are the only complete protien found in the vegetable kingdom. Soy beans are the next closest.
To obtain all the essential amino acids from foods to make a complete protien, it is best to practice proper food combining. beans and rice make a complete protien. whole wheat bread and almond butter make a complete protien. etc
Otherwise, it is only meat and fish sources of protien that stand alone as complete protiens.

 

[Erin Pavlina]

It used to be believed that a person had to combine foods to form a complete protein. That opinion was first espoused by Francis Moore Lappe in her book Diet for a Small Planet. 20 years later, she realized she was wrong. The body forms an amino acid pool where amino acids sit and wait until a complementary protein comes by. Then it combines and moves along on its way. Francis revised her original theory and rewrote Diet for a Small Planet to reflect this new information.

 

[Quirky]

I'm pretty sure quinoa has complete proteins, as well. See www.quinoa.net

 

[cathe]

I don't think quinoa is a complete protein but it is very high in protein . . . and a great grain to eat. Millet is high in protein and iron and a good choice too.

I was thinking that for nuts and seeds which are excellent sources of calcium and iron, you could try this: Grind them up in a coffee grinder or blender and stir them into hot or cold cereal in the morning - no one will even know. You can also sprinkle it on yogurt, fruit, rice or replace some of the flour in baking with it.

As for your other concerns- I was vegan for 10 years but did not thrive on that diet. Now I eat eggs (from our own chickens) and occasional fish and find I feel much better and am healthier. I think there are responsible ways to eat animal products and I try to do my best. My health and that of my kids is my first concern. If you do decide to make the switch, I hope you will feel good about your decision and not guilty.

 

[allys jill]

i have to say that i had the same experience as cathe on the vegan diet and have added in animal foods.

 

[mama2annabelle]

Just the opposite of Cathe and allys jill, I felt MUCH MUCH better during the almost 5 years I was vegan than I do now since adding eggs and salmon. The past four months since changing my diet I have been feeling overall less healthy. I have been sick for almost a month now with a bad cold which turned into bronchitis, and I rarely have had a cold that lasted more than a few days. I'm sure being sick now is not directly related to my eating, but the fact remains that I just don't have the overall health that I used to.

I guess my point here is, everyone is different and has different needs. Cathe and Erin had some good ideas about disguising foods. About the calcium issue: have you tried calcium enriched orange juice? I'm not really into "enriched" foods, but I do drink my o.j. for the calcium.
I hope you find a solution to calm your worries. Take Care.

 

[allys jill]

hmmm, interesting. may i ask why then you don't change your diet back?

 

[majazama]

I am a semi-vegetarian. I try to follow the blood type diet. My baby has tasted turkey, eggs, and when she was first born my mom cooked up a chicken and the baby smelt like chicken. That was funny, but anyways... I think that if you eat according to your blood type, you will feel healthier. I'm a type B and so is Haeven and it's true that I shouldn't have eaten chicken, the baby had big red splotches all over her body. If you are a type A, you will thrive on a vegetarian diet (maybe even vegan). But if you are type O, your constitution needs meat, you have a more acidic stomache to digest the proteins in meat. I think that explains why some people can be vegan, while others cannot.

I heard that calcium doen not absorb as well if you take it with Vit. C containing foods (ie calcium enriched orange juice). They just cancel each other out, IMO.

I think, that if it were me, I would follow my children's lead on what they should eat. It sounds to me as though your daughter (older one) is enjoying very filling foods (kidney beans, garbanzo beans) . And it's true that she is becoming an adolescent... maybe she would like to eat a quiche, or maybe some cheese on her sandwiches. What is your blood type?, cause that could have something to do with your daughters aversion to some types of beans etc.

NAK ~Jas

 

[cathe]

I read the blood type book a couple of years ago when I was still vegan. I am a blood type O which the book says should be eating lots of meat and protein - which seemed to make sense of why I wasn't doing well as a vegan. I'm still not sure I absolutely beleive the blood type diet but it does give a good explanation of why different people do better on different diets.

 

[mama2annabelle]

That's very interesting haeven'smomma. I've heard of that book, but never read it. Maybe it has some truth to it. I have Type A blood and as I said before, I feel much better on a vegan diet.

allys jill, as I stated in my first post, I began eating the eggs and salmon because I was concerned about my daughter's weight gain and I felt that adding the extra fat and protein might help. I am definitely not planning on eating this way forever, just until DD is not nursing as much and is getting most of her nutrition from other food besides breastmilk. However crazy it may sound, I would rather live with feeling not my best, than worry that I may not be giving my daughter all that she needs.

 

[mama2annabelle]

Oh, I have never heard that about calcium and vitamin C. I know that calcium and iron inhibit eachother's absorption so they shouldn't be taken together, and iron absorption is boosted by vitamin C, but I'll have to look into the cal/vit C thing. Thanks for the info.

 

[allys jill]

oops sorry, i didn't realize that you had posted that. i do understand what you are saying as the health of my dd was very motivating in my switch from vegan to omnivore. she has been sick much, much less and just looks better---her skin tone is a better color (she was washed out before) , she has rosy cheeks now! she grew a lot too though of course it's arguable if she just happened to grow if the animal foods gave her boost. i know what you mean, though.

 

[majazama]

I actually don't follow the blood type diet religeously,but I do notice when I eat something "bad" for me according to the book, I feel bad. For example, when I eat regular bread, I get gassy and tired... so I eat Ezekeil bread which is made out of sprouted grains and legumes, and I feel energized from it. I highly recommend Ezekiel (or Manna) bread for everyone. Sprouted food is easier to digest, and better for you. So I think that the blood type book has lots of valid points. Apparently the man who wrote the book was just continuing his father's reseach, so it had been studied for 20-odd years before the author started studying it himself.

 

[Mona]

I had a friend who was type O blood. Changed her diet from vegan to the O diet (includes eating meat).
It almost killed her- she became very sick and her entire system was devestated. She had been macro for a very long time, so perhaps it was jsut that her body had been clean for so long that it couldn't take the toxins.
Anyway, I was very glad to hear that i was an A blood person anyway. (no meat for a's)

 

[Erin Pavlina]

Mama2Anabelle,

Are you eating the eggs and salmon to get DHA? If so, there are now vegan DHA supplements you can take that work very well.

Go to www.nutru.com for info.

 

[MamaMonica]

I have really struggled with the vegan/vegetarian/omnivore concept. I have never liked meat and have been vegetarain most of my life, vegan for some and have had poor health. I also had poor health as a meat-eating young child on the farm, though.

I have struggled to keep my weight up and my energy as well. I am a type O, and wonder if I would be better off eating meat. I have not felt better the times I've done it, with the exception of chicken or beef broth- I don't like meat but the broths have been strengthening.

There is this barrier- of being vegetarian or not- I think our ancestors ate bugs or whatever could be scavenged, and were omnivorous- with a MOSTLY plant based diet. I have been eating eggs and chicken broth recently. My health declined so seriously that I was in trouble. I was also diagnosed with celiac disease and can have no gluten containing grains- and am supposed to ditch the dairy- so basically it has come down to me or the chicken.

 

[Erin Pavlina]

The thing that bugs me about meat is what they do to it these days. I mean, when the animals were left to roam free and a person went out and hunted it to feed his family, that's one thing. The animal was probably free of disease and certainly wasn't pumped full of the stuff it's pumped full of these days.

Today's meat is so filthy, in my opinion. The animals are suffering from disease and are forced to ingest remnants of their own species. Not to mention the antibiotics, hormones, fungicides, insectices, pesticides, herbicides, fecal matter, etc. They are forced to eat unnaturally for their species and are then slaughtered inhumanely. The animals suffer tremendous physcial, emotional, and psychological abuse before their lives end unnaturally.

I think that even if meat was correct for my body type, I still couldn't bring myself to contribute to that kind of torture nor do I think my body is better off eating all that garbage.

A good apple I say!