Must Your Kids Be Carnivores?

July 17 -- The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, goes the old saying. Only in this case, maybe that should be vegetable.

For Reed Mangles, becoming a parent meant, naturally, that she and her husband would have their daughters follow their strict vegetarian diet.

"It would have been strange to have us be vegan and our kids not," says the mother of two from Amherst, Mass., who is a registered dietitian and nutrition advisor to the Baltimore, Md.-based Vegetarian Resource Group, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public on vegetarianism.

For vegans — vegetarians who choose to eliminate all animal products from their diets, including dairy — ensuring proper nutrition often involves finding replacements for vitamins and minerals that are abundant in meats, cheeses and milk.

But the challenge becomes more difficult with children, whose nutritional requirements are even greater for some vitamins and minerals than for adults.

The good news, say experts, is that keeping these diets is now easier than ever given the wealth of soy and wheat — meat and dairy alternatives stocking supermarket shelves, as well as the recent emphasis on plant-based diets for promoting heart health and reducing cancer risk.

"There was sort of a stigma attached to vegetarian diets, but I think that has gone away," says Dr. Dennis Bier, director of the Children's Nutrition Research Center at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Today there are so many products available. It makes it much easier for people to adopt the diets and blend in."

Nutrients To Watch

But is vegetarianism all right for your kids? "You absolutely can raise a healthy child, teenager and adult on a vegetarian eating plan. That's a definite," says Sheah Rarback, a Miami-based registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, an organization of food and nutrition experts based in Chicago.

Important nutrients can be obtained from plant sources, although some are more abundant in animal sources. So Rarback stresses that in some cases more planning is needed, particularly with growing children. "It's critical that a teen or a child is getting all of the nutrition they need because of their growth issues," she says.