That is a tough one. One can eat vegan and be healthy, I've heard, but that isn't how young kids get strong and tall and healthy. Easier to be healthy while being vegetarian, but still requires rigor to have enough nutrients that meat/fish provide. Some religions don't eat pork or beef or are all vegetarian, and those kids turn out fine, if sometimes shorter. Vegan is harsher, and I don't think it is good for younger kids (until 16 or so), so I'd be looking at the health issues. Are they being watched over closely by a medical doctor who sees that all nutrients are being provided? If so, then fine, it is a parental choice. If there are health issues with it, then that should be published and parents can get in trouble for abusing kids by not providing healthy food. So I guess it really does have to be the parents' choice, unless it gets out of hand - like all parenting choices. I'd love to be harsher on vegans making their kids be vegans, but it is so hard to tell - for example I know a kid (young teen) who is vegan, and his parents are begging him to gain weight. So there might always be other issues at play than we know from outside a family so it is very hard to judge.

At the grocery store, and in restaraunts, I point out to my kids what obese/ extremely obese people eat.....

Isn't this like saying your forcing your kid to be a carnivore/omnivore because our YOUR chocies? Raise the kid how you want until he/she is able to make his/her own choice, then respect it. It really isn't that hard.

I have gone through a variety of dietary choices for a variety of reasons over the past 10 years. Anyone living in my house at the time was along for the ride. Including the kids. That means, when I was vegan, there were only vegan options at home. What I did not do is restrict what they could eat away from home. Away from home if they were offered something we didn't eat, I would inform them of what they were eating, but it was their choice. As young as 2 or 3 that was the policy.

I truly don't see ethical food choices as being any different from religion and treat it much the same way. "This is what I believe and why. You have to decide what you believe and why." Now, health related food choices, especially allergy related food choices, are a different story. That totally falls under "it's my job to take care of you."

Oh come on.Countrywoman. Vegan is a choice, not a dogma? Really. Vegan is a choice precisely because people believe it is a dogma for them.

I happen to know the CEO of a vegan restaurant chain. When I first met him, I got the selfrighteous, " my wife and I turned vegan before we were ten." He told me about the fake meat from impossible foods and how it is made from soy and contains wheat, and Bill Gates and other billionaires are involved as if that gives it any scientific, ethical or moral credence. When I see this guy and his family they are always coughing and often seem very pail and weak. The soy and wheat that they use to make this fake meat are mono culture crops that are devastating to the earth when grown. Their goal is to turn the world into an animal product free world, which is impossible and insane since it goes against the nature of nature. They are trying to make a fake egg. I have tested this fake meat and it is not healthy and is actually harmful in the sense that holding a cell phone against your head is unhealthy.

And people on here talk about a balanced vegan diet?? What does that mean?? There is no such thing. Plants do not contain all the nutrients that mammals or even certain insects require like the wasp that attacks tarantulas. KIller whales eat other baby whales because they must. Giant squids eat other large squid because they must. A sperm whale cannot eat seaweed and live. I know, I am becoming the bad guy on here. Once again, you should at least read The Vegetarian Myth and The Vegan Betrayal before you come on here and respond to me like Ken Hamm who thinks the Flintstones is a documentary!

I raised my kids semi-vegetarian; much of their protein came from sprouted organic legumes, avocados, natural peanut butter, but they also drank kefir, ate homemade yoghurt, cheese, butter.

They were never sick-never even caught colds-their entire childhoods, and were tumbling and dance champions.

It's not terribly difficult to eat a healthy vegan diet and if someone is against eating animals or supporting factory farms why would they feed that food to their kids? Hot dogs, bacon etc. Have all been proven to be carcinogenic so they're probably a lot less healthy than a balanced vegan diet.

Children need protein but there are vegetable based proteins. Eating a cadaver is not essential to the human diet. It is prevalent in northern Euro diets as the growing season is so short. We are a Northern Euro based country ie Germanic/Anglican so corpse eating is dominant in our culture. Then there is corporate food which mass produces carcasses & the government permits cattle to run on BLM property destroying the eco system at 39 cents per cattle.

Here we go again. Don't expect a vegan to be able to carry on an unemotional intellectual scientific conversation about this. Its like talking to the president of Liberty University about god, or Ken Hamm about whether humans and dinosaurs lived together, which he will tell you they most certainly did.

And I love when they play the animal rights card while they are restraining their carnivore pet dog by the leash. And growing any plant food involves the killing of animals, and please ask the animals that eat each other about the rights of the animals they are eating. And here they step in with humans are able to think more morally than animals, and I am thinking, Oh Really, while contemplating Auschwitz!

It's sorta like the anti-abortion crowd. (A statement made without judgment.) If you believe abortion is taking a human life then it is wrong and it is always wrong. If you believe eating animal is cruel, then it's always cruel. You can't make exceptions for little kids in your family. For the record, I do not believe abortion is taking a human life and I'm not upset enough about animal cruelty to quit eating them.

We feed our kids what we eat. If we ate grubs they would eat grubs. Just the way life is. A balanced vegan diet is quite healthy. One does have to be careful about getting B12 but our current processed standard American diet is not very healthy. Generally, it takes a lot more effort to be vegan than not. Though I found it to be a pain in the ass cooking for my vegan teen it did make me much more aware of how much crap is in our food. The folks that live the longest and healthiest are not meat eaters. Meat eating, much like religion, really gets people all worked up. I've been a vegetarian for over 10 years and people get silly about it as if it is an act of heresy. I don't care what they eat but they get nuts like I would take their damn bacon from them.

It is quite possible for humans - young and old - to live a robust, healthy life without eating creatures at all. Simply a matter of learning more, and then teaching children what the truths are so they may decide. The argument for us being omnivores doesn't hold up well against a study of our teeth and digestive system ...

I think that the kid will grow up eating whatever the parents eat, but will make their own choices later anyway. I don't see the harm in letting a kid have a hot dog now and then. Of course, I'm not vegan by a long shot.

Not so sure we are meant to eat meat. This senior has never has such perfect blood test scores since going vegan. I feel like a teen ager. Also, way back when, I worked for a vegan holistic doctor whose German Shepherd was also vegan. That beautifully tempered dog had a shinny coat and was very healthy. Listen, we are all in the dark about these things. Everything is really supposition. There are so many scientific test results on all sides contradicting each other. However, in the meantime, the way livestock is now raised is inhuman, horrifying, atrocious...you get my outrage. There was a time when cows, chickens and pigs were treated well and fed according to nature. Now, when you eat chickens, beef and pork you are taking in their pus, their sickness, etc. A few years down the road when one has to become a hospital regular he doesn't connect it with things like this. But who know for sure.

I am vegan but wouldnt push any of my choices on my two children they are 49 and 50yrs old now so it wouldnt be appropriate but I think its a personal choice what we decide to eat why how and when .