Children can fairly easily have a vegetarian diet without any issues. There are a few things to look out for (enough vitamin B1, B12, iron and protein), but if you provide fish, eggs, tofu, tempeh, and legumes this is not generally a problem. Most store-bought meat replacements (vegetarian meat balls etc.) have those added already.

Veganism is a different beast and requires much more care (and probably advice from a dietician). Vegan children not getting the nutrition they need seems to be a point of concern for many health care professionals.

I would wager that most national nutrition centres provide useful guidance on vegetarianism or even veganism by now based on up-to-date research — the Dutch Voedingscentrum does¹.

1: https://www.voedingscentrum.nl/nl/service/vraag-en-antwoord/...

On the B12 front, it should be noted that while vegetarians and vegans usually need to supplement this, animals are supplemented B12 in their feed, which is the largest reason why meat eaters don't need to supplement. They're being indirectly supplemented.

I keep seeing this claim in these HN threads and across the internet, do you have a reliable source for this? Google brings up nothing but vegan conspiracy sites.

Found this interesting article from someone that seems to know cows: https://praisetheruminant.com/ruminations/is-it-true-that-co...

Yeah, this article makes more sense. My grandfather put out the blue salt blocks every year so the cows would get enough cobalt (I remember asking teachers why salt blocks were blue until one knew why). That's why this all seems like nonsense, none of the farmers I know ever gave their cows B12 supplements or have even heard of it. Now their VET might have given B12 shots to the odd calf like that article states, that I would believe.

If this is true, what was the dietary source of B12 in pre-modern times?

Trust me, it's always a rabbit hole; with claims like "humans used to be entirely, or mostly, vegan and got our vitamin b12 from eating the dirt on root vegetables" or "if we stopped washing our fruits and vegetables we would get enough from the bacteria on the produce"

Things can be complicated I'm not sure that is a reason to think these theories are incorrect. I am tempted to believe microbiome and eating more slightly rotten/off food than we currently do also helped but it's not as if humans from antiquity were all living into their 90s.

Well, except there is no evidence at all that humans were ever anything other than omnivores and large segments of humanity were know to be hunter gatherer societies from the archaeological record. A few societies have become ovo-lacto vegetarians and some modern humans have effectively become vegan.

Fish is not vegetarian and, as you say, eggs and dairy are not vegan.

Strictly speaking that depends on the definition of meat, which for some is limited to mammalian meat. Others prefer to call vegetarianism plus fish pescetarianism, vegaquarianism, or pesco-vegetarianism.

He said specifically that eating fish is not vegetarian, this is 100% an accurate statement, you can choose to define the word "meat" however you want but the textbook definition of vegetarianism does not include fish.

But semantics don't really matter if we're talking about vegetarianism for sustainability of the planet.

Define fish as meat or not, that is, in my understanding, a currently unsustainable model.

Ok, I always thought that vegetarian = no fish and meat and veganism = vegetarian - egg, milk and anything produced by animals.

If you can complement with fish, then it's obviously a lot easier.

My kids are 100% vegetarian from birth and I can't say we have observed any issue whatsoever. We do ensure they eat a very varied diet. We do get their bloods checked from time to time and nothing notable there either.

Of course it's possible they would have been gigantic, athletic super-geniuses if we'd fed them meat. I can't disprove that, except to say I ate meat as a kid and I'm decidedly average.

N=1

This is an existence proof that deficiency is not inevitable.