Jul 04, 2021 11:00:00

Does a vegan diet make children unhealthy?

Because I do not eat the meat or fish is vegetarian (vegetarian), but

vegan is a lifestyle that in addition to meat and fish not even eat up eggs and dairy products. In recent years, vegan diets have been attracting attention in Europe and the United States from the viewpoints of health, environment, and ethics, but as a result of investigating the effects on growing children in a new study, while it is good for cardiovascular health, It turns out that height and bone density decrease, and the risk of fractures continues to increase for the rest of your life.

Growth, body composition, and cardiovascular and nutritional risk of 5- to 10-y-old children consuming vegetarian, vegan, or omnivore diets | The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition | Oxford Academic
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/113/6/1565/6178918

Vegan diets in children may bring heart benefits but pose growth risks | UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health --UCL – University College London
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/child-health/news/2021/jun/vegan-diets-children-may-bring-heart-benefits-pose-growth-risks

Do vegan diets make kids shorter and weaker?
https://theconversation.com/do-vegan-diets-make-kids-shorter-and-weaker-162420

Dr. Margozata Desmond and colleagues at the Children's Memorial Health Institute , Poland's premier pediatric health institution, investigated how dietary lifestyles affect children's health. Dr. Desmond et al. Targeted 72 healthy dietists (children who eat meat and vegetables) aged 5 to 10 years old, 63 vegetarians, and 52 vegans, for a total of 187 people. We investigated how it affects body composition, cardiovascular risk, and nutrition. The subjects were selected for each group so that there would be no difference in gender, age, education by mother, place of residence, height of parents, etc., vegetarian children averaged 5.3 years, and vegan children averaged 5.9 years. , Continued to eat in line with his own principles.

Analysis of the subjects' health status revealed that vegan children

had 25% lower levels of LDL cholesterol , called 'bad cholesterol,' good cardiovascular health, and lower body fat percentage, which are health benefits. Turned out. On the other hand, it was also found that vegan children are on average 3 cm shorter, have 4-6% lower bone density, and are more than three times more likely to be deficient in B vitamins.

In addition, vegetarians were found to be unhealthy in their cardiovascular system, even compared to omnivores, while undernourishment was less pronounced. The exact reason is unclear, but according to Dr. Desmond and colleagues, this result is likely due to vegetarian children eating a lot of processed foods.

According to Dr. Evangeline Manziolis of the University of South Australia, who describes this paper, 'Vegan pups have 4-6% lower bone density than eclipse pups, because 95% of bone density is built by age 20. That means there is a high risk of fractures for the rest of your life. He pointed out that the vegan diet has a problem that it is difficult to ingest nutrients important for bone development and growth, such as calcium, vitamin D, and protein that can be ingested from animal foods.

Dr. Desmond and his team said from the results of this study that vitamin B-12 and vitamin D should be supplemented in the form of supplements if they continue to eat vegetarian vegans. He argued that vegetarian and vegan families need to work to raise this awareness.

Regarding this study, Professor Clare Collins of the Department of Nutrition, University of Newcastle pointed out that all the children who were the subjects belonged to 'highly educated families'. The undernourishment problem seen in vegan vegetarian children in this study is the 'best result', suggesting that vegan vegetarian children in the real world may be in poorer nutritional status. Suggested.