Optimal Diet For Kid’s Health, Mental, and Physical Performance

There’s this current push to eat a heavily plant based or vegan diet and to give up eating any animal derived foods.

The underlying theme is that vegan diets are healthier than diets that include animals.

There is a good reason to question this idea. Certain key nutrients are missing if we don’t eat any animals. Other important nutrients are in shorter supply on a vegan diet.

Often times people may adopt a vegan diet for other non-health related reasons ranging from religious beliefs to animal cruelty reasons and more.

People should eat the diet they want to eat, but should be aware of potential problems.

If paying very close attention to the potential problems and deficiencies then some can remain healthy on a vegan diet, whereas others can not. It is necessary to supplement if an adult chooses to be vegan. Even then, some things are difficult.

This includes generally eating a very high carb, lower fat and protein diet. This drives chronically high blood sugar and insulin which is a root cause of many chronic diseases and chronic inflammation.

It’s more difficult to maintain muscle mass due to the vegetable protein quality. You can supplement with various plant based proteins, but these are highly processed foods and certainly moves away from a whole food diet.

There is a concern about fats. It’s difficult to get enough of the right kinds of fats. The fat type tends to skew heavily towards omega 6 fats and at the same time is low in omega 3 fats, particularly those types that are usable to us. This also drives inflammation and chronic problems.

Several key micronutrients are a real concern including but not limited to B12 and iron.

There’s a concern about immune system effects in some people, particularly with grains (gluten) and beans. Peanuts and soy are examples of fairly common food reactivities. Now we’re seeing some people developing pea protein allergies.

There’s also a difference between ‘ok‘ and optimal both in nutrients and in impact on health and performance. In other words, people are generally pretty resilient. We can make due even if we’re not living the healthiest lifestyle or eating the best foods for nutritional content.

In the study mentioned below eating meat gave the kids better mental and physical performance.

A study published in the Journal of Nutrition compared the effect of meat versus milk versus plant-based snacks on functional outcomes in children.

The researcher talk about how ideally nutrition comes from whole foods and not powders and pills. They talk about how the very high nutritional quality of meat offers some unique benefits that aren’t available in the same quantity or quality than non-meat sources.

The researchers found that in this population of kids… meat wins across the board in terms of cognitive performance, leadership behavior, physical activity, and muscle mass. 

Reference:
Meat Supplementation Improves Growth, Cognitive, and Behavioral Outcomes in Kenyan Children
The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 137, Issue 4, April 2007, Pages 1119–1123, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/137.4.1119

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/137/4/1119/4664672