Cholesterol in vegan diet

[Lisanaaron]

Hi all,
I'm new to this forum and am glad I found you all. I'm raising my 13month old son vegan. My husband has been vegan for 10 years and I have been since pregnancy. We just think that there are a lot of pollutants in animal products.

I read Dr. Sears' Nutrition book and he claims that babies up to 2 years of age needs a lot of cholesterol, where do I get this on a vegan diet? I don't think I would like to resort to tropical oils. We are giving him lots of avocados but there is no cholesterol in that. I understand that at his age, my son needs a lot of fat in this diet. We are supplementing his diet and mine with organic flax seed oil and wheat germ.

Also, my son is still breastfed and I'm planning on child led wean. Is it important to wait one hour after bf before giving him solids and how many times should he eat solids? Right now we are giving him 3 meals a day. We started solids later at 10 months of age when he really wanted our food.

Thanks
Lisa

[Erin Pavlina]

I highly respect the work of Dr. Sears. I think he may have said cholesterol, but what babies really need is fat. Good sources of fat include avocado, flaxseeds and flax oil, canola oil, and olive oil. You can also give your child nut butters, nut milks, and non-hydrogenated margarine (such as Earth Balance).

Since you're still bf'ing, your son will get a lot of his fat from you. At this age, I was giving my daughter pretty much anything she wanted to eat. She ate a lot of tofu and rice milk at this age as well.

I don't know anything about waiting an hour after bf'ing before giving solids. Perhaps someone else will know.

Welcome to the boards!

[sophie]

Don't quote me on this, but i'm pretty sure that breastmilk has high levels of cholesterol, specifically designed for babies and toddlers. The only vegan sources of cholesterol are coconut oil and palm oil. Both my children (and several other children of parents on these boards, I'm sure) never had cocnut or palm oil in their diets, and breastmilk kept them extremely healthy, so i'm sure this is what the book must have been referring to.

[EricP]

This is from a Canadian health site I was looking at:

"There are two sources of the cholesterol found in the human body:

Dietary: Derived from the animal foods that we eat. Plant foods do not contain cholesterol (one reason that a vegetarian diet may be healthy). Foods that are free of cholesterol may be quite high in other fats (eg triglycerides). This is an important fact, because eating foods that contain too much of these fats may cause your levels of cholesterol to increase, as the body can synthesize cholesterol using them.
Synthesis: Most of the cells of the body can make cholesterol from simple compounds. The liver is particularly active in this process. It secretes cholesterol into the blood, mainly attached to LDL. The LDL finds its way to various tissues, and delivers its cholesterol to their cells. When cholesterol eventually leaves these tissues, it is attached to HDL, which directs cholesterol to the liver, partly for excretion from the body via the bile and intestines. "

I also found this on another site:

"What about cholesterol?
Like other vegetable fats palm oil is free from cholesterol."

AND this one:

"What Coconut Oil DOES NOT Do: * Does not contain cholesterol. * Does not increase blood cholesterol level. "

Vegans live longer because there is no cholesterol in our diets :D

Regards,

EricP