Today, nobody can deny that a balanced and varied plant diet is much healthier than the typical Western diet. Numerous studies have found that the consumption of meat and other animal products is conducive to many Western lifestyle diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, allergies, heart/circulation ailments, high blood pressure and cancer, so it is no wonder that vegetarians and vegans have also been shown to exhibit a higher life expectancy. Typical fears about plant-based lifestyles, frequently spread by the animal husbandry industry and those in its orbit, have long since been found out for the myths that they are: vegetarians and vegans don’t have to be specially qualified experts in nutrition, nor do they have to perform complicated calculations to prevent malnutrition.

So where does this leave the animal-based diet, which is so widespread today? Let’s take a brief look with a focus on meat: In light of food scandals over recent years, the realities of meat production and the current available evidence, the question arises of whether – purely in terms of health – it is responsible to feed children meat at all. At the latest since October 2015, when the WHO announced on the back of more than 800 studies that red meat was “probably carcinogenic” and processed meat such as sausage was “carcinogenic”, hardly anyone can now be unaware of just how harmful to health meat in general can be. On top of this, in the UK, 80% of chickens, 45% of laying hens and 75% of breeding pigs are factory farmed, meaning that their bodies and products are also contaminated with the residue of antibiotics, tranquilisers, psychopharmaceuticals and other substances administered on a large scale in the livestock industry. Over the years, these residues accumulate in the bodies of those who consume these animals and their products, which also explains why the breast milk of long-term vegetarians and especially vegans has been shown to contain much fewer contaminants. The organic livestock industry also permits the use of, say, antibiotics to a degree. And while even toxin-free animal products (which in fact hardly exist in reality) do not contain any nutrients that can't be easily obtained from a balanced meat-free or vegan diet, they still always contain potentially harmful substances such as saturated fatty acids and cholesterol.

As parents, we are responsible for our children’s diet and should be aware that the foundations for healthy eating patterns are laid in infancy. Anyone who still believes that animal procucts such as meat and dairy are vital either doesn’t know any better, so is simply uninformed, or stands to gain from the uncritical acceptance of this assertion. Knowledge is power and only those armed with the requisite knowledge are in a position to make informed nutritional decisions.

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