From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… tells me he only likes eggs, fish fingers and pancakes …”

My quest for a climate-friendly family diet

Graihagh Jackson

Climate journalist Graihagh Jackson goes on a quest to find a diet that’s healthy for her child, and helps fight climate change – but will her son actually eat it?

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… My diet is currently about 75% plants and I follow EAT-Lancet’s “Food for the Anthropocene” report recommendations.

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For those considering cutting meat and animal products out entirely, one factor to consider is age, as a vegan diet can be risky for young children, and there have been cases of death or severe malnutrition of babies or young children being given only plant-based food or drinks.

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But here comes the next challenge: getting my toddler to actually eat those plants. He frequently tells me he only likes eggs, fish fingers and pancakes and eschews the colourful plate of my carefully cooked (and in my opinion, delicious) vegetables I serve up alongside his favourites.

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Back in the kitchen, my toddler is blowing Zs in his bed. The Lion King has finally stopped playing and I’m on my hands and knees, trying to scrape the cereal out from between the grout. As my mind meanders, I’m struck by an image of my son. He’s older but still has those same curious eyes locked with mine. I imagine him asking me: “Did you do everything you could to fight climate change?” And I want to be able to reply yes, I did. I want the best possible future for my kid and I want him to feel good about those decisions too.

…Read more: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250813-my-quest-for-a-climate-friendly-family-diet

To her credit Graihagh Jackson rejects the vegan option. I agree with Graihagh that feeding kids a vegan diet can be dangerous.

It is easy to slip vegetables to kids, if you do your own cooking – my mum taught me the trick of using a grater to shred vegetables and slipping them inside meat patties or rissoles. Crushing them up inside potato mash is another trick. Apparently these subterfuges were our main source of nutrition when we were kids.

But if the kid is craving bacon there’s a good chance that bacon is exactly what their body needs.

There was an experiment in the 1930s which showed when offered pretty much everything they want, young children ended up picking out a more or less balanced diet. Sure they gorged themselves on sweets initially, but they got sick of sweets, and started eating other foods.

My cousin told me a similar story of when she worked in a chocolate factory. They didn’t even try to stop production line workers from picking chocolate off the line, the only rule was you weren’t allowed to take it home. But my cousin told me after a few days even the thought of eating chocolate made her feel ill.

I’m not advocating completely unsupervised eating for young kids, but that study certainly opened my eyes to why my mum frequently asked us what we wanted to eat, just as my grandma used to ask her what she wanted, even when times were hard. Wisdom didn’t start with modern science.

Meat protein is good for kids. They should eat some vegetables, and slipping vegetables into other foods for kids who refuse to eat their greens is just good parenting. But if they want fish or bacon, give them what their growing bodies need. The climate will take care of itself, but your kids need you to take care of them.