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What are your views on vegan moms that are pregnant, and say the baby is craving meat so they have to eat it? I heard so many say they stopped being vegan for their baby.

Give Yourself a Break

Deb Kennedy, PhD - Give Yourself a Break

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Question

Toni Crawford

What are your views on vegan moms that are pregnant, and say the baby is craving meat so they have to eat it? I heard so many say they stopped being vegan for their baby.

Answer

Oh, Tony, I wonder if you've ever been pregnant. I could not get enough tomatoes for one of mine and then orange juice for the other. Uh, I embrace and honor the wisdom of moms I and of every single person it's body. It is. And they're making that choice. To answer your question, I think you're asking, you can have a healthful baby on a vegan diet if you know what you're doing and you're getting enough iron and calories and protein, healthful fats. But if you don't know how to do that, if you're a vegan that thinks that, um, pizza with tomato sauce and plant-based cheese is vegan versus a salad with hemp seeds and chickpeas and greens, um, and all of that, it depends what vegan means to them. Number one, it's not a simple question I can answer. Um, but if they're craving meat and they wanna have it, that's, that's their choice to make. So, um, yeah, I haven't, I haven't heard that one before, but thank you for sharing that.

Deb Kennedy, PhD

PhD Nutritionist

drdebkennedy.com

*Deb Kennedy, PhD* nutritionist, chef and Value-Based Medicine certified, is dedicated to helping people improve their health through food. She received her Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from Tufts University, and previously held roles with Tufts Human Nutrition Research Center for Aging, Yale’s Prevention Research Center, Babies and Children’s Hospital at New York Presbyterian, Cornell University, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. She also held the position of first Chair for Best Practices at the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative (CIA) and was an instructor in Culinary Nutrition at the New England Culinary Institute. A pioneer in the growing field of culinary medicine, and self-proclaimed food warrior, Dr. Kennedy is the author of multiple books, including The Culinary Medicine Textbook, a five-volume publication to date that uses her research in food, flavor, eating and nutrition to lay out the concepts and fundamental topics needed to master culinary medicine. For the last several years, Deb, along with 40 nutritionists and a dozen chefs from around the world, created culinary competencies for nutrition recommendations. She has developed the Food Coach Academy based on this work, which is delivered in a science-based modular format that provides individuals with expertise needed to use the power of food to transform health.