<p>Up until this point - aren’t most baby foods fortified with necessary vitamins and minerals? It seems to me if the baby is eating baby cereal (what is it rice or oatmeal) and eating baby foods everything should be a-ok. </p>
<p>I think the pediatrician should have given your D some guidelines about what to make sure baby eats - if pediatrician is aware that baby is vegetarian. </p>
<p>Remember - most of our foods we eat in the US are all fortified with iron, calcium, etc. I think most cereal and alot of flour is too.</p>
<p>If your daughter is giving the baby Gerber’s with chicken, milk & eggs - then I don’t see a problem – the baby certainly is NOT “vegetarian” at this point, and your daughter’s practices demonstrate that it isn’t a big deal to her. I don’t really see the point of discussing the parents’ vegetarian practices or proposed diet as the child grows unless the child has some sort of health problems – if the baby’s growth and development is normal, then it is safe to assume that the child is getting adequate nutrition.</p>
<p>I can tell you one thing: little kids who are being raised vegetarian are 1000 times better off than little kids who are fed a steady diet of McDonald’s chicken nuggets, fries & cola (which unfortunately is fairly common among meat-eaters). If milk & eggs are part of the veggie diet, then an kid’s multivitamin tablet once daily is more than enough to meet nutritional needs for an average, healthy child.</p>
<p>“I don’t really see the point of discussing the parents’ vegetarian practices or proposed diet as the child grows unless the child has some sort of health problem.”</p>
<p>I think the idea is to prevent a health problem. Everyone should discuss their child’s diet with the child’s doctor in order to prevent future health problems, including kids being raised on a “normal” diet. It makes more sense to talk to the doctor now and learn how to prevent health problems than to treat problems as they come up, which could end up being more expensive, painful, and possably dangerous to the child’s long-term health – things like iron defficiency can be corrected, but things like stunted growth may not (not that either of these things would necessarily result from a veggie diet – just giving examples).</p>
<p>please take this in the constructive way it is being offered – reading your posts, i can’t help but think that part of what may be going on is that your d may think you disapprove of her vegetarian choice and that may be why you are having trouble getting thru to her. even if you don’t think you are being negative, it may be slipping thru. </p>
<p>new parents can be very sensitive to perceived criticism from their own parents. you may be thinking you are saying one thing, but they may be hearing something else. (eg, you may be saying, “gee shouldn’t you just let the pediatrician know about that?”; they could be hearing, “you really need to let the doctor know because you may be endangering our grandchild with these crazy ideas of yours!” - even if you really don’t think you mean to be saying that!)</p>
<p>in terms of your underlying question - in general, i think most pediatricians would want to know about dietary habits in general. vegetarians can face certain dietary issues which could lead to health issues - eg, not only enough protein, but enough of the right types of complementary proteins; enough iron. BUT someone who is a knowledgeable vegetarian can avoid problems. BUT it certainly can’t hurt for a doctor to know this info, and certainly makes the doctor’s knowledge more complete which is a good thing (i think).</p>
<p>in general, food and diet is a VERY common topic of conversation between a parent and pediatrician. perhaps the best course is to help your d to just see a discussion of the vegetarianism as just a normal part of that type of dialogue rather than being something “different” that has to be reviewed by the doctor.</p>
<p>My mother was a vegetarian since childhood and got stomach cancer at the age of 54 (died at 69). She got her protein from beans but she always suspected that she didn’t get the amino acids that only come from meat. I would have thought that with all the vegetables she ate that she would have been somewhat protected from cancer.</p>
<p>I don’t think that being vegetarian makes you more healthy. Why do we have canines and not tough incisors and molars like vegetarian cows? There must be a good reason! Meats have good protein and makes you stronger.</p>
<p>All very interesting. Okay, I’m done, you all can post on if you like but I’m done. Thanks.
Unbelievablem, nice for the psychology but I wouldn’t make assumptions about people from dippy threads on forums.</p>
<p>Hazmat, about the quality of protein. Proteins are graded on how many of the essential amino acids, the kind we can’t make in our own bodies, they contain and if they are in the correct proportions for human needs. Egg gets a grade of about 90 and was the mainstay of the diets prescribed for renal patients in the days before dialysis. In this way the patients could get just the amino acids they required without creating a lot of nitrogenous wastes. Meat has a quality of 70. A vegetarian diet that mixes whole grains (whole wheat, oats barley or unprocessed rice) and beans (Soy, peas, garbanzos etc) also has a quality of about 70. So, you are correct: if a vegetarian eats only from the bean family and takes in no whole grain the protein is inferior in quality. Next time you make a burrito, make it with whole wheat tortillas.</p>
<p>the following info from the amerian dietetic assoc has alot of info re vegetarian diets including info re infants and children on vegetarian diets:</p>
<p>It is not ignorance for many - it is lack of knowledge - big difference. Docs can’t be the end all of everything - they can’t be expected to know everything- that is why there are specialists - like nutritionists maybe?!?</p>
<p>“It is not ignorance for many - it is lack of knowledge - big difference.”</p>
<p>No, I think it is deliberate ignorance - they had to work hard not to notice. They aren’t paid to, and they are in the business of illness care, not health care. And because the general public think of physicians as the guardians of health, they have become a significant part of the problem rather than the solution.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t blame the obesity problem primarily on the doctors (although they do certainly have something to do with it). I think bigger problems are poverty (since unhealthy food is cheaper and many families simply can’t afford to give their kids a healthy diet), lack of education or deliberate ignorance (people know that certain foods are bad for them but keep eating them anyway, or maybe don’t even know what they’re doing wrong), and a combination of cultural factors which encourage “quick fix” weight loss by pills and surgery instead of appropriate diet and exercise, since people are so busy (and in some cases, lazy).</p>
<p>Doctors may be contributing to the general popular ignorance about healthy diet, but at the day’s end, there’s only so much a doctor can do to change the patient’s behavior. How many of you have heard from your doctor that you should be taking a daily multivitamin, should be exercising more, should be watching your posture, whatever… and then haven’t really done it?</p>
<p>You can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. One can’t force people, or even encourage them, to do the healthy thing, whether it involves eating, smoking, drinking, or whatever, unless the person him/herself is ready for the change.</p>
<p>Instead of blaming doctors, blame the food lobbyists and manufacturers, who fill too many food items with chemicals, preservatives and high fructose corn syrup. And blame them again because this unhealthy food is relatively cheap, and doesn’t need refridgeration, so poor people rely on it more than expensive fresh fruits and vegetables. Blame the exurban planners, who have planned communities a hundred miles from a nearby city, and require extensive automobile commutes. Blame the general sedentary lifestyle of most Americans, which is a societal problem, not necessarily a doctor’s problem, although there are surely medical ramifications.</p>
<p>“Doctors may be contributing to the general popular ignorance about healthy diet, but at the day’s end, there’s only so much a doctor can do to change the patient’s behavior.”</p>
<p>Over the 35 years, I don’t think they really tried (until an acute illness turned up on their doorsteps). In fact, for the most part, I really don’t think they even noticed. </p>
<p>Now they do. But to extend your analogy, the horse is now out of the barn.</p>