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. 2022 Aug 31;14(17):3591.
doi: 10.3390/nu14173591.

Do Vegetarian Diets Provide Adequate Nutrient Intake during Complementary Feeding? A Systematic Review

Giovanni Simeone  1 , Marcello Bergamini  2 , Maria Carmen Verga  3 , Barbara Cuomo  4 , Giuseppe D'Antonio  5 , Iride Dello Iacono  6 , Dora Di Mauro  7 , Francesco Di Mauro  8 , Giuseppe Di Mauro  9 , Lucia Leonardi  10 , Vito Leonardo Miniello  11 , Filomena Palma  12 , Immacolata Scotese  13 , Giovanna Tezza  14 , Andrea Vania  15 , Margherita Caroli  16
Affiliations

Do Vegetarian Diets Provide Adequate Nutrient Intake during Complementary Feeding? A Systematic Review

Giovanni Simeone et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

During the complementary feeding period, any nutritional deficiencies may negatively impact infant growth and neurodevelopment. A healthy diet containing all essential nutrients is strongly recommended by the WHO during infancy. Because vegetarian diets are becoming increasingly popular in many industrialized countries, some parents ask the pediatrician for a vegetarian diet, partially or entirely free of animal-source foods, for their children from an early age. This systematic review aims to evaluate the evidence on how vegetarian complementary feeding impacts infant growth, neurodevelopment, risk of wasted and/or stunted growth, overweight and obesity. The SR was registered with PROSPERO 2021 (CRD 42021273592). A comprehensive search strategy was adopted to search and find all relevant studies. For ethical reasons, there are no interventional studies assessing the impact of non-supplemented vegetarian/vegan diets on the physical and neurocognitive development of children, but there are numerous studies that have analyzed the effects of dietary deficiencies on individual nutrients. Based on current evidence, vegetarian and vegan diets during the complementary feeding period have not been shown to be safe, and the current best evidence suggests that the risk of critical micronutrient deficiencies or insufficiencies and growth retardation is high: they may result in significantly different outcomes in neuropsychological development and growth when compared with a healthy omnivorous diet such as the Mediterranean Diet. There are also no data documenting the protective effect of vegetarian or vegan diets against communicable diseases in children aged 6 months to 2-3 years.

Keywords: complementary feeding; growth; infections; malnutrition; neurodevelopment; not communicable diseases; overweight; vegetarian; vitamin B12; weaning.

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Conflict of interest statement

All the authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Vegetarian diets and different auxological development and/or growth. Flow diagram of the guidelines search. GL: Guide-Line.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Vegetarian diets and different auxological development and/or growth. Flow diagram of the SRs search. SR: Systematic Review.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Vegetarian diets and different auxological development and/or growth. Flow diagram of the study search.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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