WIDLIMS ep #23 – Plant-based diets in childhood and beyond with Dr Yami

I had the pleasure of welcoming Dr Yami Cazorla-Lancaster (she/her), a pediatrician in the US, to discuss the evidence around plant-based eating for children! I feel like this can be a controversial topic, in part due to the media coverage of horror stories where vegan diets go wrong and children suffer. This is episode 23 of WIDLIMS – What I Didn’t Learn in Medical School.

I wanted to get Dr Yami's expertise for some of the common questions and considerations when it comes to raising little ones in a plant-forward way. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did recording it! This episode covers...

• Benefits of plant-based diets for all stages of life
• Tips to improve digestion when transitioning to a plant-based diet and the microbiome
• Weaning children from breastfeeding to plant foods
• How to plan for a wholesome, nutritious plant-based diet including which supplements to take 
  • Common concerns: excluding dairy, including soya foods, nutrients of concern
• Intuitive eating principles in raising children 
  • Picky eaters – what does one do?
• Raising plant-based eaters in a non-vegan world

Please listen, download, share, and rate the show 5 stars wherever you listen <3 Thank you ever so much for exploring WIDLIMS with me!

Mentioned in this episode

• Study regarding children’s dietary intakes and proportion of processed foods:
  • Wang L, Martínez Steele E, Du M, et al. Trends in Consumption of Ultraprocessed Foods Among US Youths Aged 2-19 Years, 1999-2018. JAMA. 2021;326(6):519–530. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.10238 available free via JAMA HERE
• Doctor Yami’s own podcast, with over 200 episodes at the time of writing, can be found HERE
• Doctor Yami’s website with a tonne of resources and further reading available for free can be found HERE
• Doctor Yami’s website for pediatric nutrition Veggie Fit Kids
• Dr Yami Cazorla-Lancaster’s book Intuitive eating: how to raise children who love to eat healty, can be found HERE

A little bit of background

As mentioned by Dr Cazorla-Lancaster in this episode, the state of children’s diets at the moment is pretty poor. Both in the US and the UK, a large proportion of what young people eat is now made up of processed foods – about two thirds of the US child’s diet in fact (ref1, ref2).

I am an advocate for plant-based diets for optimal human health as well as for planetary health and animal welfare. As I have covered in previous podcast episodes, this is in line with evidence based medicine and backed up by years of research. For further listening, I would recommend checking out previous WIDLIMS-episodes; the episode with Dr Shireen Kassam, consultant haematologist in London, is a good place to start, but I also recommend listening to my episode with Dr Nitu Bajekal, consultant ObGyn, especially for the point of view relating to PCOS, insulin resistance and diabetes.

Importantly, this episode also covers intuitive eating for children. This is an incredibly interesting topic, and something to consider bringing into children’s lives early on.

Further reading/listening

• A great talk by PBHP-UK (about halfway down the page, or word search ctrl+F ‘children’) HERE by Dr Miriam Martinez-Biarge. This covers healthy plant-based diets for children and how to plan a healthful diet, with references to scientific evidence.
• Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine page on Nutrition for Kids HERE
  • Healthy snacks for kids recipe sheet HERE
• Simon Hill’s Plant Proof podcast episode with ‘Plant Based Juniors’ about predominantly plant-based eating for children HERE
• BBC good food simple summary of meeting nutritional needs at different life stages HERE
• Chang K, Khandpur N, Neri D, et al. Association Between Childhood Consumption of Ultraprocessed Food and Adiposity Trajectories in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Birth Cohort. JAMA Pediatr. 2021;175(9):e211573. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.1573