A landmark study of nearly 1.2 million infants led by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers and the Health Ministry Nutrition Department found that infants from vegetarian and vegan households grew in trajectories that were nearly identical to those of their omnivorous peers by age 2.

The peer-reviewed research, led by Kerem Avital, a clinical dietitian and doctoral student, and Prof. Danit R. Shahar, both at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was recently published in JAMA Network Open.

“In the context of developed countries, these findings are highly reassuring,” Avital told The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site Zman Yisrael.

“The data suggest that with the proper environment, plant-based diets do not compromise the fundamental physical development of infants,” she said.

The Health Ministry provided data from 2014 to 2023, which tracked the development of approximately 70% of the children in the country.

“This is a huge mass of data that we had access to thanks to the fact that in Israel, nearly 95% of babies are brought to a Tipat Halav [baby wellness center],” Avital said. “It’s an amazing statistic.”

Vital stats on infants

The researchers collected babies’ developmental data: weight, height, and head circumference over the first two years of life.

They then compared three groups: babies from omnivorous families, from vegetarian families, and from vegan families.

The definition of “omnivorous” refers to the family and not the baby, Avital explained, because the assumption is that when parents declare certain eating habits at home, they also apply to the baby.

The research revealed that infants from vegan households closely tracked their omnivorous peers across all measurements, including weight, length, and head circumference.

While infants in vegan households had higher odds of being underweight in the first 60 days of life, this disparity diminished and was no longer statistically significant by 24 months of age.

In Avital’s assessment, the cause of the weight gap in childbirth is that vegan mothers tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI).

Furthermore, stunting rates remained low across all dietary patterns, with no statistically significant differences between the groups by age 2.

The researcher emphasized that well-planned plant-based diets with access to nutritional counseling during pregnancy and infancy are important to support optimal infant development.

‘Unlike the myth, plant foods have more iron than meat’

Avital said that when she recently lectured about the results of the study to doctors at a family health clinic, “they asked a lot of questions and in the end said, ‘Wow, you shattered some myths.’”

Avital is currently collecting data for a study to determine if there is a difference in the iron level of babies from vegan, vegetarian, and omnivorous families.

“Spoiler, there will be no difference,” she said. “Unlike the myth, plant foods like beans have more iron than meat.”

“While the iron from meat is absorbed faster,” she said, “vegan mothers feed the children the most iron-rich foods such as tofu, legumes, seeds, and nuts, so that eventually it balances out.”

The researcher stressed that the main message to parents is that an infant does not have to eat meat to grow.

More importantly, she said, is that the baby “eats real food and not ultra-processed food and junk. The vegan world is also full of processed substitutes today. Bamba and Coke are on a vegan menu, but it’s not a menu that a child you love should grow up on.”

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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU)

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