Is 811 (or lfrv) diet suitable for babies and young children?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by CHANG-YU on April 24, 2010 at 4:11am

Hi Kelly, Thanks so much for sharing your experience.

For a year, I used to restrict my children’s raw fat intake (esp on nuts) because I’ve met some skinny 100% raw children who eat mostly nuts and fruit (some dried fruits) with little greens (their mother said they hate greens, about 1 mouthful of greens a day). Some young raw boys tend to be hyper active (their mother’s comments) when having too much fruits. My children would sneaking on nuts and dates behind my back. I'm now more relaxing about raw nuts, so always have 1-2 cups of soaked nuts on the kitchen counter.

My children usually have 1-3 pints of green smoothies, fruits, sprouts and 1-2 big greens salads with avacados and some seaweed (sometime seeds or nuts dressings) in a day, they thrive better with this approach.

When children are brought up all pure raw I trust they'd have good instincts.

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Permalink Reply by CHANG-YU on April 26, 2010 at 2:35am

My son also started to like Greens around 20 months, but not before. I thought it was becuase we introduced green smoothies. How interesting!!

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Permalink Reply by Patrick on April 26, 2010 at 4:15am

interesting, our son is 20 months now and in the last month or so has started to enjoy the occasional spinach or lettuce leaf, he likes my blended (very green) salads, in fact he helps to prepare them :-) he has been a fan of celery for several months, seems to be good for teething pain.

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Permalink Reply by Karmyn on April 24, 2010 at 4:38am

A low raw fat diet isn't recommended for young children--I'm not sure at what age it's appropriate.

My son, Andrew is almost 3 (his 3rd birthday is Sunday) and he eats about 30-35% of his calories from fat.

He still nurses 2-3x/day (I personally feel my best when I average between 10-20% of my calories from fat).

We're a 100% raw family.

Andrew really likes coconuts, avocados, durian and nuts/seeds like pistachios, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.

He likes almost all types of fruit.

He even likes eating greens like celery, spinach, romaine lettuce, etc.

He also eats raw broccoli plain (he's been known to throw fits if he sees broccoli in the store and can't eat it).

He even likes eating root veggies like carrots, beets and parsnips.

I hope this helps!

All the best,

Karmyn
http://karmynmalone.com

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Permalink Reply by CHANG-YU on April 26, 2010 at 3:01am

Thanks, Karmyn.
It's great to hear from another all raw family. I
We're so happy to share the experience on rasing 100% raw children.
Do you guys still live in Panama?
We love and missed the tropics.
Best, Chang-yu

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Permalink Reply by CHANG-YU on April 26, 2010 at 2:51am

Hi Nik,
Thanks so much for the sweet comment.
We don't believe in supplements, have not took any for 5 years, but have not make up my mind about B12. We did take some powder Spirulina on airplanes, not sure if it's categoised as supplements.
Really appreciate your contribution here.

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Permalink Reply by Stephane on April 24, 2010 at 4:50am

We are a raw family, for about 6 years for me and my wife. And we have a 18 month old boy, Moya. Moya ate only raw food, and breast milk from his raw mother. He goes for times when he wants nuts or avocados, then fruits: bananas, oranges, cherimoya, mangoes, and he can have several in a raw. He also loves veggies, and goes for carrots, fava beans, lettuce and greens, and cucumbers in season (he is crazy about cucumbers since he is about 9 month old.
We don't think we need to restrain him to any given percentage of anything. He still has some instinct we lost long time ago. His brain didn't buy any commercial/nutritional message so far. So I trust him more than myself, even if I know he is influenced by the way we eat and act. So when he wants to eat, that's fine, and if he wants breast milk, fine too. Actually, I think a baby needs more fat than an adult because he needs to build up his nervous system and brain, and those are based on fatty cells. And to see him running around all day long, even after eating fat, he looks pretty fine to me.
True also that my wife tends to eat more fatty food since she breast feed, and also at the end of the pregnancy, but that doesn't mean all fat, and doesn't mean tons of calories as well.

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Permalink Reply by CHANG-YU on April 26, 2010 at 3:29am

Hi Stephane,
Thanks so much for sharing your family experience.
I do believe the younger the children the better their instinctive ability to choose the right foods for them. I always said I've learned more from my children than all those knowledge out there.
And sharing experience with other raw families have been very rewarding.
Appreciate your detail input.
Peace & Love, Chang-yu

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Permalink Reply by Jess on April 24, 2010 at 5:09am

I just read that article by Shazzie...it was very disheartening :(
I don't have children, nor do I know alot about child nutrition. I do want to raise my children vegan, and most likely 80-100% raw and preferably without multiple supplements, perhaps just B12 and D(depending on where we live).
I really look foward to reading others' contributions to this thread...

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Permalink Reply by CHANG-YU on April 26, 2010 at 3:32am

Hi Jess.,
Tell me about it. I felt the same after reading her article.
Yet it's comforting to hear Dr. DG's view on this when we met last weekend.
Thanks for chipping in.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick on April 24, 2010 at 6:03am

Hi Chang-yu, not sure if it was you that I spoke with briefly at the get-together on Sunday, where Doug gave a talk?

The first thing to take note of, is that Doug Graham does not advocate 811 for young ones, this ratio is essentially for adults and that is who the book is written for. In a nutshell (hopefully, I'm not misquoting) Doug believes that the ratio moves from around the 50% fat found in breastmilk at the commencement of weaning to around 10% at the age of 10 years, with a somewhat unknown rate of change in between, but it would be about a 5% drop per year if linear. Let the child decide what is required, just make sure that a broad range including high fat such as avocado is available.

I spoke with Doug and Rozi (who are the most lovely people and very happy to share their knowledge) and it gave me much greater confidence to believe in myself and what we are doing to raise our son. If it wasn't for charts and norms and averages and friends and family and just about everyone telling us how we should be bringing up our child and what he should be like, we would be blissfully happy ... all be it a bit tired :-) Our son is thriving, as in alert/intelligent, able/dexterous, loving/caring and more, but if we compare him to others of his age he is smaller (as in not so tall, not so heavy and not so podgy) and so comparison to others his age brings fear. He is beautiful, people are captivated by him, he is like a gorgeous elfin, why would we want to make him 'average' by feeding him things that we believe are detrimental to his health, now and in the future.

I believe (and Doug said this to me also) that vegan children will not develop at the same rate as children raised on vegetarian and meat diets. In the article you linked to by Shazzie she writes "A healthy raw vegan child should not be smaller or lighter than other children", which I think is absolute rubbish, it just doesn't stand up even to the lightest investigation. Is she really suggesting that a child who consumes milk everyday, with it's concentration of growth hormones fed to cows, isn't going to have his/her natural physical development altered? Astounding, but because she knows a huge amount about raw nutrition, her opinions carry weight, even though they might be wrong.

Shazzie may have got too involved in detail and so missed the big picture, isolating something like K2 and her belief that we need to consume dairy or a supplement to get it just doesn’t make any kind of sense, no matter what her ‘science’ research has shown her.

If it was you on Sunday, with your son and daughter, I have to say that Shazzie obviously never met them or you - makes me wonder how many other children she never got to see before making her judgement on nutritional requirements - as they looked wonderful.

More to say, but no time now :-)

Patrick

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Permalink Reply by Mandi on April 26, 2010 at 4:54am

I think this is very valuable insight. Don't children who enter puberty later have more time for their brains to develop and usually end up smarter? And of course, there's a definite trend for earlier and earlier puberty now, so comparing raw/vegan children to the ever-changing "norm" can't be correct!

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