Vegan for Life (19 page)

You may very well feel like cooking up a storm during and after your pregnancy. But just in case you don’t have the time or energy for much food prep, we’ve kept things simple with these sample menus. They are meant to illustrate the ease of planning healthy vegan menus without fuss. These menus utilize six mini-meals, which can be helpful with managing heartburn and nausea.

Even the most confident vegan adults might feel a little nervous about a vegan diet for their newborn baby. Infants typically triple their weight in the first year of life and need enough nutritious food to see them through this early growth spurt. Can a vegan diet satisfy their needs?

During the first months of a baby’s life, this isn’t even an issue. All infants start out as vegetarians. Or, to be more correct, they begin their lives as “lactarians.” For the first four months or so, infants don’t need anything other than breast milk. It’s the perfect, complete food for a newborn. Unless they are given B
₁₂
supplements (needed only if the mom’s diet is inadequate), the diets of vegan babies are exactly the same as infants in omnivore families until they are around seven months old.

For the first four to six months of life, babies don’t need—and shouldn’t have—anything other than breast milk (or infant formula). They don’t need any solid foods during this time, and certain vegetables can be dangerous to very young infants.

Between the ages of four and six months, babies start to show that they are ready for solid foods. One sign of readiness is the ability to sit up and maintain balance. Another is the ability to use the tongue to move food to the back of the mouth for swallowing. Your pediatrician will help you decide when your baby is ready for solid foods, but all babies should start having some solid foods no later than six months of age.
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“Solid” is a bit of an overstatement for the first non-milk foods a baby eats. They are more like thick liquids—fed from a spoon, not a bottle.

The first food for an infant is usually an iron-fortified infant rice cereal mixed with breast milk or infant formula. There isn’t anything wrong with other choices, but rice cereal is easily digested and unlikely to cause allergies. Once a baby is used to cereal and eating around ⅓ cup per day, begin to introduce mashed fruits and vegetables like applesauce, banana, pureed peaches or pears, strained white and sweet potatoes, carrots, green beans, and avocado.

During this period, breast milk or soy formula continues to play a major role in your baby’s diet and will be a part of the menu until at least the first birthday. Breast milk or infant formula is especially important for providing zinc, which can otherwise be low in a vegan infant’s diet. Even after your baby starts to consume solid foods, he or she needs either breast milk or a commercial infant formula. Regular soymilk should never be offered to babies before the first birthday because, like cow’s milk, it is a poor fit for an infant’s nutritional needs. Be sure to read “When Breast-Feeding Isn’t an Option” on page 147.

At around seven months, your baby will be ready to drink apple juice from a cup and explore protein-rich foods. This is when the diet of a baby in a vegan household starts to look a little bit different from that of other infants. First protein-rich foods for vegan infants include legumes
(cook them thoroughly and puree them), well-mashed tofu, and soy yogurt. This is a good time to start introducing vegetables with a stronger flavor like kale and collards. You can temper their flavors by pureeing them with bland or sweet foods like applesauce, tofu, or avocado.

Infants are usually ready for finger foods, like chunks of tofu or meat analogs, bread, and crackers, at ten months, and by the first birthday they can have nut butters or tahini spread thinly on crackers.

A few things to keep in mind for vegan babies:

After the mad growth spurt and enthusiastic appetite of the first twelve months, things begin to slow down. Toddlers can have sluggish appetites, and children aren’t known for their adventurous eating habits at this stage. Picky and sometimes quirky eating behavior can make it difficult to get toddlers and preschoolers to eat anything at all, let alone to try new foods.

Full-fat fortified soymilk can be introduced to a baby on the first birthday. Avoid using other milks made from rice, almonds, hemp, coconut, or oats as the main beverage, since they are too low in protein (and calories) for young children. If your child is a slow grower or you aren’t certain that his or her diet is high enough in zinc, it might be wise to continue with either breast-feeding or soy infant formula for a while.

The food guide on page 149 and table of suggested supplements on page 159 will help you plan healthy meals for toddlers. Don’t worry if
your child doesn’t eat exactly this way every single day. Two or three days of nothing but peanut butter and banana sandwiches never hurt anyone—not even a three-year-old. And getting children to eat healthful foods like vegetables isn’t a vegan problem; it’s a universal problem for parents of young children.