Dear Laura…How can I approach gentle nutrition with my kids when the whole internet is shoving nutritional reductionism down my throat?

Hey team - welcome to ‘Dear Laura’ - a monthly column where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer the questions that readers submit. If you’d like to submit a question for me to answer next month - then you can leave it as a comment below or submit it here.

I’m happy to answer Qs about anti-diet nutrition, developing a more peaceful relationship to food and weight-inclusive health, body image challenges, and, of course, challenges with feeding your kiddos. Please give as much detail as you’re comfortable with and let me know if you’d like me to include your name or keep it anon.

Please remember that this answer is for educational purposes only and isn’t a substitute for medical or nutritional advice; please speak to your GP or a qualified nutrition professional if you need further support.

Here’s this month’s question:

When I became a mom I bought a book about (vegan) nutrition for kids (we are vegan) by a paediatric doctor. But after finding intuitive eating for myself, and wanting to expand into also raising an intuitive eater, I'm struggling with the lessons from this book. (I can add that I also follow this doctor on Instagram and it sometimes becomes quite triggering). I can give you some examples: Vegan cheeses, the majority are made from a base of coconut oil, and the book says; this is something ONLY for special occasions, (because of the type of fat). Or soy milk: some have a high amount of sugar, and the book lists in grams how much a child can have of sugar daily and that you have to be really careful choosing the brand/type of milk. There is of course a whole lot more. My question is how do these types of guidelines align with intuitive eating? Is this paediatric doctor (and people like her) exaggerating? I was very impressed by her, firstly because she fully supports a vegan diet, but she also backs it up with a lot of research and data. But the guidelines look a whole lot like restricting to me. How do you do intuitive eating and gentle nutrition for kids?

This is such a great question - and I think reflects a tension that a lot of parents experience in the anti-diet space that usually gets overlooked, trivialised, or just dismissed - which is, when my child necessarily has a limited diet (because of ethical/environmental concerns, allergy, or medical reasons), how can I support their nutrition without getting sucked into diet culture? There is a distinct sense in the anti-diet space that any and all forms of veganism are 1) inherently disordered or a sign of an eating disorder and 2) too restrictive and probably rooted in diet culture. Given how many people are moving to a more plant-based diet because of environmental and ethical reasons, I think it’s really unfortunate that this narrative is still so prevalent. I think it’s also important to recognise that more and more kids and teens are choosing veganism, and we need to be able to support them in that choice.

AND AND AND it still feels important to gently interrogate the reasons why we are pursuing veganism. Do we believe a plant-based diet has mystical health-giving qualities? Do we believe it will make us thin? Are we using it as a socially sanctioned form of disordered eating? Is it a cover-up for an eating disorder? Is it a bid for control and certainty when things feel overwhelming and too much. All valid questions, but it’s not for me to speculate on, and in the case of this question I trust the author has done The Work and understands their own motivations here. Constantly being skeptical of vegan parents is also not a helpful stance.