I am raising my six-month old baby girl on a vegan diet. While I am well-versed in planning vegan diets for an adult, I am not sure how to make sure my daughter is meeting nutrient needs. Can you provide me with a recommended daily allowance for protein and calcium for babies and small children? Currently my daughter’s daily diet consists of breastmilk, half cup of oat cereal mixed with either vitamin C-fortified pear juice or fortified soymilk (no more than a tablespoon) and half to 1 jar each of a fruit and vegetable. She has just started on a liquid vitamin with iron and I plan to grind up vitamin B12 tablets and mix a pinch in with her cereal. She is at the 75th percentile in both height and weight and is showing signs that her current diet is not enough. Her doctor said she is ready for mashed table foods. Her doctor is worried about how she will meet protein needs and seemed relieved when I mentioned that she could have tofu and beans. In an earlier article, you recommended not feeding protein foods to babies until they are seven months old. Why is that? Also, you said not to offer soymilk until a baby is one year old. But I assume that mixing a small amount of soymilk into cereal is okay. And it is okay to give her seed butters like tahini?

If your doctor says that your baby is ready for higher-protein foods now, it’s fine to begin introducing them. I would start with well-mashed, aseptically-packaged tofu and then progress to small servings of beans. Make sure that the legumes are well-cooked and you may want to strain them to remove the skins when your baby is first learning to eat these foods. The golden rule of introducing solid foods to a baby’s diet is to introduce just one new food every three days or so, to make sure that she is not allergic to any of these foods. Foods like tahini and other seed and nut butters are usually introduced as a thin spread on bread. But because they can cause choking in babies, these foods should not be introduced until after the first birthday.

Protein requirements for infants between the ages of six months and one year are 14 grams per day. (The government will be releasing new protein recommendations early this coming fall, so these recommendations may change.) Vegan children have slightly higher protein needs than omnivore children because of the differences in amino acid composition and digestibility of plant proteins. This is not important in early infancy when a baby’s diet is exclusively or almost exclusively breast milk or infant formula. However, by age one year, when your baby is relying more on table foods and less on milk, her protein needs will be a little higher than those of infants in omnivore families. Protein needs of a one-year old infant are between 13 and 16 grams of protein per day and for a vegan infant, they would be between 18 and 19 grams per day. These protein needs are very easily met. For example, a cup of soymilk contains about 6 grams of protein and a half cup of tofu contains about 5 grams. So you can see that it is not difficult to plan a diet for a vegan baby that provides enough protein. Although protein combining is no longer considered necessary for vegetarians, it is possible that it is helpful for very young children. So as your baby gets a little older and is consuming more solid foods and less breast milk, include small servings of grains and legumes/tofu at meals. Right now, even with the gradual transition to table foods, your baby is still consuming a lot of breast milk and this will supply her with adequate protein.

Recommended calcium intake for your daughter is 270 mg per day. As she progresses from a diet based primarily on breast milk to one that contains more solid foods, it is important to begin introducing more good sources of calcium into her diet such as calcium-set tofu and well-cooked, mashed or strained leafy green vegetables. (Home-prepared leafy green vegetables like spinach should not be offered to babies before the age of four months, however.

As you know, the best milk for your baby until at least one year of age is breast milk. Commercial soy-based infant formula is okay as a substitute, but regular soymilk–even if it is fortified–is not. However, mixing just a tablespoon or so of regular soymilk into your baby’s cereal should not present any problems.