By Josie Moody, Office Manager

Vegan pregnancy and parenting—it’s a hot topic for vegan and non-vegan parents alike. Once an inconceivable idea, it’s now becoming more widely recognized as a safe and healthy diet for children of all ages. And in today’s tech savvy world, that information can be made available within seconds.

Today we have the privilege of interviewing one of the many people who help make that information accessible. Not only does she make it accessible, but she also holds space for conversation, questions, and advice. Let’s meet Janet Kearney, a vegan parent herself and the administrator of the Vegan Pregnancy and Parenting Facebook page.

Josie Moody: How did the Vegan Pregnancy and Parenting Facebook page get started?

Janet Kearney: A few years ago, when I was pregnant with my son, I tried to find some information on veganism and pregnancy. I found the Vegan Pregnancy and Parenting page, but it was full of spam and only had a few hundred members. I contacted the administrator of the page, and she eventually let me take over.

The group has over twenty-five thousand members now, and I still learn new information every day! Who knew baby poop was such a highly discussed topic?

Josie: What are some of the biggest issues vegan parents discuss on the page?

Janet: The topic of vegan baby formula comes up a lot because it’s just not available. I try to remind parents that as vegans we do our absolute best to avoid animal exploitation, but sometimes we have to make peace with the fact that there’s literally no other choice.* I try to encourage the parents by telling them that they’re doing the best they can.

Vegan parents also express frustration about others’ disapproval of their decision to raise their children vegan.

The best advice I’ve heard—and provided—is to just give it time. Vegan parents don’t need to light the bridges and never look back. Most of the time these comments come from well-intentioned family members or friends who genuinely care about the well-being of the children. I try to remind parents that the majority of us were not born vegan, so we need to try to be understanding of others’ fears.

*There are soy formulas available, but almost all brands are not strict 100% vegan formulas due to processing vitamin D3 with sheep’s wool.

Josie: What’s the biggest shift you’ve seen in vegan parenting since becoming a mother?

Janet: The biggest shift is just a growth in veganism in general. A few years ago, telling someone my husband and I planned to raise our children vegan would lead to an inbox full of emails—sent by concerned friends who’d pass along links to pages that discussed how raising children vegan was a bad idea. Now, we tell people our kids are vegan and they engage in a positive conversation. They’re usually quick to tell us about other vegan families they know.

Josie: I’ve heard a lot of parents express concern that if their kids are vegan they will “miss out” on “normal” life experiences, such as Halloween or friends’ birthday parties. Is this something that comes up on the Facebook page?

Janet: Yes, it does. Personally, my kids haven’t missed out on anything. Put simply, other people adapt. And if on the occasion my kids go to a party where I know there won’t be anything for them to eat, I just bring along a cupcake and snacks. If it’s a pizza party, I’ll ask the host if I can chip in a few dollars for some vegan slices or I’ll bring some of my own.

Josie: I heard you’re going to be starting a Vegan Pregnancy and Parenting website. When will that go live?

Janet: Hopefully we’ll launch the site in August. We’ll have a vegan doctor, midwife, doula, and nutritionist on board, along with recipe developers. We’ll also feature other people who just write their own amazing blogs and vlogs. It’s all coming together.

Josie: One last question—what are your and your kids’ favorite snacks?

Janet: My kids and I love crackers with hummus, strawberries, or any kind of fruit. Nice cream is a big hit in our house—so big that I’ve wondered if I could grow bananas in the snowy climate of New York. I make baked tots for them by mashing sweet potatoes up into little balls. I bake them in the oven until they’re crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Apple slices dipped in peanut butter, covered in fine coconut dust always leaves an empty plate.

Josie: Thank you for taking the time to chat, Janet, and for the time and effort you put into making online resources available for vegan parents.

For a limited time, you can sport this exclusive shirt that benefits Vegan Outreach’s work and spreads the message that veganism helps protect the planet.

Proceeds will help fuel our outreach—through leafleting college campuses, feeding delicious vegan food to veg-curious community members, providing nutrition information and recipes to help ease the transition, and more!

Options include two styles each of tees and tanks—plus, we have kids’ sizes!

Purchase yours by Wednesday, August 9 and be one of the only people to have this one-of-a-kind shirt!

Order now before time runs out! Thank you!

By Victor Flores, Greater New Mexico Community Engagement and Events Coordinator

Vegan Outreach recently hosted a vegan grocery store tour at Albertson’s Market in Alamogordo, NM. The purpose of the tour was to show veg-curious folks how easily the grocery store can be navigated when shopping for a plant-based lifestyle.

My wife Karla and I spent 2 ½ hours in the store with the attendees. We joyfully walked up and down each aisle, pointing out the plant-based alternatives—such as non-dairy milks and vegan meats and cheeses. We introduced the group to food products they hadn’t heard of before, like Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), vital wheat gluten, and nutritional yeast. It was fun explaining how each one can tastefully be incorporated and/or substituted for animal food products.

As vegans who enjoy snacking, we wanted our new friends to know that there would be no need to give up good-tasting snack foods! We were not shy in pointing out products like Lenny and Larry’s Complete Cookies, Annie’s Bunny Fruit Snacks, and SkinnyPop Popcorn.

Most importantly, we took time to explain how many cuisines—such as Italian and Mexican food—can be easily veganized by leaving out the meat and dairy and bulking up on the veggies and beans! We also emphasized common food items that are “accidentally vegan” to make sure no one felt as if they’d need to completely alter their grocery list.

Many left the event with a very different outlook on what a vegan lifestyle looks like. We had people tell us that they felt empowered to make changes now that they know about the wide variety of vegan foods available to them in their local grocery store.

We want to thank Albertson’s Market in Alamogordo for letting us host the tour and for donating reusable shopping bags—which had a few vegan food samples and coupons inside!

If you are in New Mexico or the El Paso, TX area and would like a store tour for your community, please email me at [email protected].

By Jack Norris, Registered Dietitian, Executive Director

I’m pictured above in the B12 jersey that VO’s Director of Outreach, Vic Sjodin, recently bestowed upon me.

If you’re new to veganism, or VO’s work, you may not know the history of vitamin B12 and its importance for vegans. This article will bring you up to speed!

Vitamin B12 is the one nutrient that can’t be supplied by plant foods. That’s an inconvenient fact, but the good news is that vegans can easily get enough vitamin B12 from fortified foods or supplements—and if you follow the recommendations (below) you can have even better vitamin B12 status than meat-eaters.

Like many nutrient deficiencies, B12 doesn’t present itself suddenly—in fact, people who’ve eaten animal products their entire lives typically have a store of vitamin B12 that will last them for a significant amount of time. It can be years before a vegan shows signs of deficiency. Due to this slow progression, a controversy has always surrounded whether vegans actually need a dietary source of vitamin B12.

All vitamin B12 is produced by some specific strains of bacteria and the vitamin B12 found in supplements is made from bacteria cultures—it’s not obtained from animals. But animals collect it in their tissues while plants don’t. And before vitamin B12 was discovered in the late 1940s, people’s attempts to be vegan often ended in a state of fatigue or neurological damage. Once discovered, vitamin B12 quickly became available in supplement form and the final piece of the nutrition puzzle was in place for a vegan lifestyle to spread.

The term “vegan” was coined by Donald Watson, one of the founders of the U.K. Vegan Society. The Vegan Society formed in 1944, but it’s not clear to me when they started pushing B12. One of the earliest studies on U.K. vegans from 1955 (1), described significant B12 deficiency with some vegans suffering from nerve damage and dementia.

In 1976, the BBC television show, Open Door, ran an episode on the Vegan Society and interviewed Dr. Tom Sanders who said a vegan diet should be supplemented with vitamin B12.

I became involved in animal rights advocacy and veganism in the late 1980s. Although the American Dietetic Association’s position was that a vegan diet could be healthy if supplemented with vitamin B12, that news didn’t seem to be reaching most of the U.S. animal rights movement. To the extent that movement leaders realized the need for vitamin B12, it was played down so as not to make the vegan diet appear unnatural.

My activism was focused almost solely on spreading veganism, and I started to come across ex-vegans who had failed to thrive on a vegan diet. In my attempt to understand this problem, I started reading the scientific literature and writings by vegan dietitians like Ginny Messina. These writings stated that vegans should supplement with vitamin B12. At the same time, I was alarmed by the case reports of vitamin B12 deficiency in vegan infants, children, and adults—some of which led to permanent damage and death.

I went back to school and became a registered dietitian in 2001. Vegans with health issues started turning to me for help, and I saw a slow trickle of vegan activists with B12 deficiency symptoms—typically tingling in the fingers and toes.

A few others and I made it our mission to inform the animal advocacy movement of the need for vegans to take vitamin B12. In 2003, a group of vegan health professionals and organizations signed an open letter to the vegan community, What Every Vegan Should Know about Vitamin B12, urging vegans to get a reliable source of B12.

Our efforts were largely successful—there are almost no mainstream animal advocacy or vegan organizations that do not acknowledge that vegans need B12. Today, I encounter much fewer cases of vitamin B12 deficiency, but there are still many vegans who haven’t received the news or neglect it.

B12 presents two problems for animal advocacy.

The first problem is that requiring supplementation implies a vegan diet is unnatural. In my mind, this is easily solved—humans didn’t evolve as vegans. In my view, the vegan movement isn’t an attempt to bring humans back to their prehistoric ways of being, but rather to move humans forward in evolution to a more humane diet. We’re lucky to live in a world that makes it possible for us to live without killing animals for food—societies before us have not been so lucky.

See Can a Natural Diet Require Supplements? for more thoughts on this.

The second, more practical problem, is that before we do vegan advocacy in a new region, we need to make sure that vitamin B12 fortified foods or supplements are available. For example, a recent study from Pakistan found that Hindu vegetarians who were eating small amounts of dairy had a high rate of vitamin B12 deficiency with some suffering neurological impairment (2).

Vegan adults can get enough vitamin B12 by following one of these options:

Please see the Daily Recommendations for other age groups.

There are a variety of other options and amounts of vitamin B12 that will work. The amounts I recommend are formulated to have a safety factor for people who might not efficiently absorb B12 or might forget to take it now and then.

Vitamin B12 supplements come in a variety of forms and these recommendations are meant for the most common and most tested form, cyanocobalamin. For information on other forms, see Methylcobalamin & Adenosylcobalamin.

A common reaction to learning about the need for vegans to take vitamin B12 is to wonder if you should go get your B12 levels tested. If you’re apparently healthy, then this isn’t necessary—just make sure you follow the recommendations.

May you live a long and healthy vegan life—be well and B12!

Reference

1. Wokes F, Badenoch J, Sinclair HM. Human dietary deficiency of vitamin B12. Am J Clin Nutr. 1955 Sep-Oct;3(5):375-82. • Link

2. Kapoor A, Baig M, Tunio SA, Memon AS, Karmani H. Neuropsychiatric and neurological problems among Vitamin B12 deficient young vegetarians. Neurosciences (Riyadh). 2017 Jul;22(3):228-232. • Link

By John Deetjen, Outreach Coordinator

I’ve really been getting to know Ontario’s amazing vegan restaurant scene this year. From London to Toronto to St. Catherines, there are countless unique vegan eateries all over the province. In fact, London just opened its first 24-hour vegan drive thru!

I’d read earlier in the year that Montreal—in the neighboring province of Quebec—is ranked one of the top international destinations for vegans. The article touted various vegan restaurants in the city, including an all vegan sushi establishment, called Sushi Momo.

Since Montreal is only a seven-hour drive away from London, which is where my girlfriend, Sam, lives, we decided to take a road trip to get a taste of the city for ourselves!

The first restaurant we went to was an Italian café called Café Dei Campi, located just north of downtown Montreal. This café was not all vegan, but it had an extensive list of vegan options. I’d never been to a traditional Italian café before, so this was a great and delicious first-time experience! It had a warm, relaxed atmosphere—perfect for enjoying our pizza and cannolis.

The next restaurant we went to, La Panthére Verte, we just happened to stumble upon while walking to our Airbnb. We decided to stop after we’d read a sign out front that advertised the establishment as an all vegan restaurant. I ordered fried tofu and a tempeh dish, and Sam ordered a falafel pita. The tofu and tempeh were seasoned perfectly, and Sam reported, “the falafel was the best!”

Next was the sushi restaurant I mentioned already, Sushi Momo. This restaurant was more formal than the others we’d tried, and were told it’d be best to make a reservation.

My expectations were met—I can’t recommend this place enough! Everything we ordered was delicious and bursting with flavor. The menu item Sam and I agreed was best was the jackfruit, avocado, and wasabi roll.

The final restaurant we stopped at on our food tour was a vegan chain called Copper Branch. It currently operates ten different restaurants in Quebec and Ontario, with three more slated to open their doors this summer and early fall. It was early, so I got the southwest tofu scramble and Sam ordered granola. We also ordered their “Einstein Smoothie,” which was a sweet and tasty combination of raspberries, maple syrup, and vanilla soymilk. It was the perfect vegan breakfast.

As you can probably tell by now, Montreal is a haven of amazing vegan options, and the restaurants Sam and I tried were just the tip of the iceberg!

For anyone who lives near or may be traveling to Montreal in the future, check out the vegan restaurant scene! Your taste buds won’t be disappointed.

By Nzinga Young, Greater NYC Community Engagement and Events Coordinator

Last month, Vegan Outreach held its first East Coast grocery store tour at Whole Foods Market in Clark, NJ. The event showed aspiring vegans how to grocery shop for a plant-based lifestyle. Veg-curious NJ residents snaked up and down the aisles as I walked them through the basics of vegan groceries.

Some tour participants were former vegans looking to get back in the game. Others were vegetarians looking to take their diet to the next level. Moms brought their sons, women brought their sisters, and nurses brought their notebooks to learn how to prepare plant-based meals.

I showed them the epicenter for affordable vegan protein—the bulk section. Participants were introduced to delicious vegan meats and popular frozen food brands that make vegan versions of their favorite ice cream flavors. We talked about the vegan staples every pantry needs, specialty items you can do without, and just how easy it is to prepare filling, flavorful meals without animal products.

Participants left the tour with coupons and samples from Field Roast, Dr. Praeger’s, Sweet Earth Natural Foods, Upton’s Naturals, Hodo Soy, Hilary’s, Tofurky, Justin’s, Amazing Grass, and Dr. Bronner’s.

More importantly, they left feeling more prepared to adopt a vegan lifestyle. I want to give a huge shout out to the brands who donated samples and coupons, and a big thank you to the NJ folks who enthusiastically participated! It was a great way to spend a Saturday!