photo from CDC.gov

by Reed Mangels, PhD, RD

There seems to be a persistent rumor that vegan children are on the short side. That may have prompted a question on VRG’s Parent and Kids Facebook Group – “Totally random but I was curious if anyone is ever concerned about their children not growing to their full height potential due to being vegan?”

There are a number of factors that affect a child’s height including genetics, the child’s health and access to adequate health care, nutrition, and environmental factors. Factors during pregnancy such as the mother’s nutrition, cigarette smoking, and exposure to environmental contaminants can affect a child’s growth. The many factors that influence height make it difficult to isolate the effect of a single factor, such as the child’s vegan diet. Nonetheless, several studies have compared the heights of vegan children to growth standards or to the heights of nonvegan children.

It’s helpful to have a basic understanding of how a child’s height is assessed. In the United States, growth charts from the World Health Organization (WHO) are used to assess growth of children less than 2 years of age. Older children are monitored with growth charts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

After accurately measuring a child’s height, that measurement is plotted on a growth chart which shows at which percentile the child’s height falls. If a child’s height is at the 50th percentile, that means that 50% of children of that age are taller and 50% are shorter.

A wide range of growth percentiles are considered “normal.” A child at the 10th percentile or the 95th percentile for height is still considered to be within the healthy range. Health care providers will want to evaluate child if the child is below the 2^nd percentile (for age 0-2 years) or below the 5^th percentile (for age 2 years and older) for length/height (1).

Of course, when any child is evaluated, factors such as the size of the parents and whether or not the child was born prematurely or if there are health issues are taken into consideration.

Recently a number of studies of vegan children have been published. These studies have all been conducted in European countries. No recent studies have examined the height of vegan children in the United States.

 Germany: A study of older children and adolescents (5.5-19.1 years old) compared 115 vegans to 149 vegetarians and 137 nonvegetarians. The three groups had a similar mean age. There was no significant difference in height (as measured in centimeters) between the three groups (2).

Czechoslovakia: 222 children ranging in age from 0.5 years to 18.5 years. There were 78 vegans, 92 vegetarians, and 52 nonvegetarians. There was no significant difference between the groups in height percentile (3).

Finland: 40 children with a median age of 3.5 years were studied. There were 6 vegans, 10 vegetarians, and 24 nonvegetarians. All of the vegan children had been vegan from birth. There was no significant difference in height scores between the groups (4).

Germany: This study included 139 vegan children, 127 vegetarian children, and 164 nonvegetarian children ages 1 to 3 years. There was no significant difference in height-for-age scores between the groups, suggesting that the children, including the vegan children, were growing normally. A small percentage (3.6%) of the vegan children were classified as stunted (very low height). Three (2.4%) of the vegetarian children and none of the nonvegetarian children were classified as stunted. The five vegan children who were classified as stunted tended to have parents who were shorter than average, to have been exclusively breastfed longer than the recommended 6 months, and to have had an inadequate calorie intake, possibly because of prolonged exclusive breastfeeding (5).

Poland: A study examined 52 vegan children, 63 vegetarian children, and 72 nonvegetarian children age 5-10 years. The three groups had a similar mean age. The vegans had a significantly lower height score which translated to the vegan group averaging 1.25 inches shorter than the nonvegetarians (6).

Multi-country: A meta-analysis which combined the results of 2 studies of vegan and nonvegan children that used z-scores to evaluate height found no significant difference in height. When a meta-analysis was conducted using 4 studies where the actual height of vegan and nonvegan children was measured, the vegan children were shorter but the study authors state that “the difference was driven by a structural imbalance in age between the groups in one included study.” (7) In other words, if you measure the height of one group of children and compare it to the height of another group of children, the younger group is likely to be shorter. Thus, the results of this meta-analysis of actual heights are highly questionable.

A total of four recent studies of vegan children have found no significant difference in height compared to nonvegan children. One study found that the vegan children were, on average, somewhat shorter. These results suggest that it’s likely that healthy vegan children, whose diets are nutritionally adequate, will have similar heights to their nonvegan peers. A recent review article, reaches similar conclusions, saying that, with the exception of a small percentage of children, vegan children have normal growth (8).

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Use and Interpretation of the WHO and CDC Growth Charts for Children from Birth to 20 Years in the United States. https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/growthcharts/resources/growthchart-508.pdf. May 2013.
2. Alexy U, Fischer M, Weder S, et al. Nutrient intake and status of German children and adolescents consuming vegetarian, vegan or omnivore diets: Results of the VeChi Youth Study. Nutrients. 2021;13(5):1707.
3. Světnička M, Heniková M, Selinger E, et al. Prevalence of iodine deficiency among vegan compared to vegetarian and omnivore children in the Czech Republic: cross-sectional study. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2023;77(11):1061-1070.
4. Hovinen T, Korkalo L, Freese R, et al. Vegan diet in young children remodels metabolism and challenges the statuses of essential nutrients. EMBO Mol Med. 2021;13(2):e13492.
5. Weder S, Hoffmann M, Becker K, Alexy U, Keller M. Energy, macronutrient intake, and anthropometrics of vegetarian, vegan, and omnivorous children (1–3 years) in Germany (VeChi Diet Study). Nutrients. 2019;11(4):832.
6. Desmond MA, Sobiecki JG, Jaworski M, et al. Growth, body composition, and cardiovascular and nutritional risk of 5- to 10-y-old children consuming vegetarian, vegan, or omnivore diets. Am J Clin Nutr. 2021;113(6):1565-1577.
7. Koller A, Rohrmann S, Wakolbinger M, et al. Health aspects of vegan diets among children and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analyses. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. Published online October 9, 2023.
8. Sutter DO, Bender N. Nutrient status and growth in vegan children. Nutr Res. 2021;91:13-25.

To read more about nutrition for vegan children see:

Feeding Vegan Kids

Vegan Nutrition in Pregnancy and Childhood