This conversation and topic is a big one. Like HUGE.

And my plant-based readers, I welcome you here.

Yes I follow an ancestral diet in my home but, of course, I also support parents who follow a plant-based approach.

Because I completely understand that for many people choosing not to consume animal products feels completely aligned and like the best path forward for them and their families.

But here’s the thing - it’s not actually about meat vs no meat. Or vegan vs paleo. Or Suzy vs Sally. That’s not a conversation I’m here to have, or want to have.

Because it’s actually not the one we should be having either.

For every child - being raised with meat or without - we need to ensure that we are meeting those key nutrients that they need to support their growth and development so they can thrive.

So often what I see happening is a child, or an adult, can’t eat a certain food or nutrient due to preferences or intolerances. So they look to replace this food or nutrient with an alternative, but the options available vary greatly in terms of benefits for our health.

Let me give an example.

It’s incredibly common in this day and age to know someone or be someone or live with someone, who has a dairy intolerance (you can read my blog all about the Downlow on Dairy here).

And we also know that dairy products do contain high levels of calcium, which is incredibly important for children’s bones and teeth development and also their cardiac function and proper nerve and muscle function. But this is only relevant if you consume dairy products and can tolerate it.

So if a child doesn’t consume dairy, we have an option of meeting this calcium requirement through real, whole foods that are naturally rich in calcium, or we can take the road of highly-marketed soy and rice milks, breakfast cereals and juices that have been fortified with calcium instead.

Let’s talk about fortification.

Recently, on my social media, I asked my lovely community if they knew that the NZ Government had made it mandatory in July 2021 to fortify all non-organic wheat bread products with folic acid. Over half of the people who responded to my poll had absolutely no idea.

So what does this mean?

Fortified foods have one or more vitamin or mineral added when they are made and were introduced years ago to address vitamin and mineral deficiencies during the first and second World Wars. Widespread fortification continues now, mainly to close nutritional gaps for those who cannot regularly afford a diet based on seasonal produce and whole foods.

The most common foods that have been fortified are some of the most accessible foods price-wise, which are breakfast cereals, bread, flour, margarine, salt, snack bars, dairy milk and plant-based milk alternatives, juices and baby foods.

So what’s the big deal if it’s helping to close nutritional gaps?

Well, what if not everyone needs those gaps closed? And, what if the forms of the vitamins and minerals added don’t actually serve our health?

Let’s dive in.

Let’s start by taking a look at the ever-popular baby rice cereal as an example.

Ingredient list: Ground Rice (98%), Sunflower Oil, Mineral (Iron), Vitamin C, Antioxidant (Herb Extract), Traces of Milk, Wheat & Soy.

So in this blog I won’t be covering why I don’t recommend starting your baby on grains, like ground rice, or vegetable oils, like sunflower oil, but you can read more about fats I love in this blog here.

Let’s talk about the iron and vitamin C listed instead.

The easiest way to know that these have been added, or this product has been fortified, is by the very fact that they are listed on the ingredient list. If the ingredients were naturally occurring then these nutrients would be listed on the nutritional panel.

So looking at baby rice cereal, it isn’t naturally rich in the necessary nutrient of iron.

Instead, it’s fortified with a poor quality version, which is not only synthetic, but a leading cause of constipation and other digestive complications for babies.

So while it may seem like an excellent way to ensure a little one is consuming the essential nutrients they need, the terms “fortified and enriched” should serve as a big red flag to parents.

Eating processed foods that are heavily fortified with certain nutrients, but lacking in others, can eventually lead to imbalances in the body. The foods that nature provides us with are already fully enriched and we shouldn’t be relying on the food industry to do it for us.

Never mind the fact that while fortification is certainly helping to close the nutritional gap for some, for others it is actually tipping them over their upper level of intake for particular nutrients.

Take the folic acid that is now mandatory to be added to bread.

This could be a whole other blog post on its own, and in time, will be so I can dive into the difference between folate and folic acid and why it’s so necessary, especially for pregnant women.

The concern here is that a study showed on folic acid being added to bread showed that a higher proportion of children in the 2 to 16 years age group exceeded the upper level of intake after fortification than before fortification. The groups most affected were those aged 2–8 years.

So what does this mean?

After fortification of folic acid in bread, a higher proportion of children aged 2-8 years were exceeding their upper level of intake. The upper level of intake is the highest average daily nutrient intake level likely to pose no adverse health effects to almost all individuals in the general population.

This is really concerning. What will the long term side effects of this be for those in the population who don’t necessarily need it? And what are the adverse health effects?

And what is the impact of consuming these synthetic versions of vitamins and minerals across our day consistently?

Take Johnny, as an example.

He starts his day with NutriGrain Cereal which has been fortified with Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Zinc Oxide,Niacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin, Folate.

He then has a sandwich for lunch with Molenberg Sandwich Bread Original which has been fortified with Folic Acid.

For afternoon tea, he has a glass of Anchor Calci Yum Flavoured Milk Chocolate which has been fortified with Calcium Carbonate and Vitamin D.

Then for a pre-dinner snack, Johnny enjoys his favourite flavour of Sanitarium Up & Go, the Breakfast Drink Choc Ice, and has more Calcium, Vitamin C, Niacin, Vitamin A, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B1, Folate.

For dinner, Mum has made toasted sandwiches using Freya's Tuscan Mixed Grain Bread which has been fortified with Folic Acid and smothers it with Meadowlea Original Spread which has been fortified with vitamins A & D.

All of a sudden, we can see over a day how one child or one human could be consuming a huge amount of fortified, synthetic nutrients simply by consuming some popular everyday foods.

The way I look at nutrition and our food has always been to ask myself this:
Were we designed to eat this food?
Do our bodies recognise it?
Do they know how to process and absorb it?

So, of course, my preference is that we always consume our nutrient needs from foods (or high quality supplements made from foods or ingredients with as least amount of processing as possible) that our body recognises.

But what about those nutrients that aren’t found in the foods we eat?

What do I mean?

Well, there are circumstances where this isn’t always possible.

An example of this, is if you are, or you are raising your child to be completely plant-based.

While it’s important for our little ones to have a well-balanced, varied diet so they are getting all of the nutrients they need, there are some specific ones to focus on that are particularly important at this crucial stage of growth and development.

In my 8-week program, Nourished Child, we go through all of these key nutrients and which foods are rich in these so they are the ones I recommend to include regularly. I provide a full list of ‘fridge fillers’ that are foods to make regularly both for families who consume plant and animal foods and those who only have plant foods.

When you choose to be plant-based, there are some key nutrients that generally most people know to focus on, like iron for example. It’s well known to place special emphasis on iron-rich plant foods when leading a plant-based lifestyle.

But some of the other nutrients that we need to focus on aren’t as well known, like omega-3s (DHA, EPA and ALA) for example.

Plant-based foods like walnuts, flaxseeds, chia seeds and hemp seeds are all rich sources of ALA (alpha lipoic acid). However, studies actually show that the conversion of these plant-based food sources of ALA to DHA is unreliable and severely restricted, even at high doses. Therefore ALA is an unreliable source of DHA for babies and those following a plant-based diet must be supplemented.

Another focus needs to be placed on vitamin B12 which is required for both mother and baby in the postpartum period. Similar to in utero, infants require vitamin B12 for proper neurological development, red blood cell production and a healthy immune system. Mothers who are deficient also produce breast milk with insufficient quantities of vitamin B12. Because there is no reliable plant-based food source of vitamin B12, we do need to look at supplementation here too.

These are just two examples of key nutrients to be mindful of when following a plant-based diet, but there are many more I would add to that list.

While my preference is to either source nutrients from the food source or from a supplement made using real foods, this is an impossible task when there isn’t a food available that someone will eat that contains that particular nutrient.

As a nutrition consultant, I have concerns around the lack of information available to parents in this space and the quality of the supplements being relied on, or the fortified food products being used in replacement of other foods for reasons I have mentioned above.

For example, if parents are relying on plant-based sources of iron for themselves and their children, they also need to be mindful that the type of iron found in plant-foods (non-heme iron) is only 2-13% absorbable.

This is the information that needs sharing so parents can make informed decisions about what foods or supplements fill those nutritional needs for their families.