So, the Kid starts school on Monday. Once again, we have to go through educating a new teacher about our diet. I guess the one semi-good thing is that her teacher this year is a little younger than I am and maybe, just maybe, has heard of the vegan diet. I was truly amazed last year when her teacher had never had a student with an allergy before. The dairy allergy is the easy part. She cannot have any dairy or dairy derivative or she will be sick. So how far do you go? “She cannot have any animal ingredients” does not seem to suffice. Last year, we thought about giving a list to the teacher, but didn’t want to insult her. We just told her what candies she could eat and also sent some snacks to keep in the room. The Kid is old enough to know what she can eat and not eat, but she can’t read ingredients, you know? But, I don’t want her to eat junk food either. We try our hardest to keep processed foods out of our house. But I hate to tell her no, you can’t have those Pringles (even though they are her favorite) or no, you can’t have smarties or Skittles every day. So what do we do? We teach her to ask questions of the food that is given her and make the right decisions.

I have received news that The Veggie Cafe will be opening this Friday (March 14th)  from 11am – 7pm.    On Saturday there will be a Veggie Kids Workshop at 3pm and an Eggless Hunt on the following Saturday (March 22nd).

I usually pickup a copy of the Greenwise magazine when I go to Publix on my grocery runs. I recently decided to get them mailed to me since I sometimes miss them and they occasionally have a good coupon or two inside. I received the newest issue yesterday and to my surprise there was an article titled “Vegetarian Juniors” in it. After reading this article I realized it could have been more aptly named “Vegan Juniors” as the mention of dairy and eggs was nowhere and the people mentioned were in fact vegan. It went on to say how infants and toddlers can thrive on a balanced vegan diet and even referenced doctors in the story. It is not easy to find positive articles discussing vegan diets for children

“In general, though, studies have shown that kids can thrive on a balanced plant-based diet. And research has found that no difference in average growth rates between vegetarian and nonvegetarian kids.”

The article goes on to suggest nutrition guidelines for a vegan or vegetarian child at different stages.

“For vegan toddlers, calorie-dense plant foods such as hummus, olives, dates and avocados may come in handy. Also, because toddlers are notoriously picky eaters, make sure your child is eating as wide a variety as possible of foods as possible.”

I was especially happy to see the term “vegan toddler”. The magazine is free and usually found at the entrance of the store. You can also subscribe here for free.

I wrote a few days ago about Hallmark Meat Packing, a slaughterhouse in California, that was using downer cows in their meat production. It seems form an article posted today on the Tennessean’s website that meat from this plant has made it into the Tennessee school system. Local officials have ordered the meat pulled because downer cows have a higher risk of being infected with mad cow disease. I can stop wondering why people will still insist on eating beef no matter what the risk. Not even to think they feed it to their children. Don’t come here with that “The USDA inspects it.” line, do you TRUST the USDA? Why didn’t they halt the shipment of the beef? Shutdown the slaughterhouse?

Does anyone have their vegan kids in school?  Know of anyone doing such with issues regarding it, either from faculty or administration?  This is just a personal ponderance of mine that I thought I would put out there.