Controversial Raw Vegan Blogger Feeds Kid the Same Way

The first time Loni Jane Anthony burst onto the international social media scene was in 2013, when people were hating on the Australian fitness blogger for sticking to her raw vegan diet despite being pregnant. Since then, Anthony has updated fans and critics alike with details about her voraciously breastfeeding, soundly sleeping infant.

Now, following the birth of her second child, Polly, just eight weeks ago, she’s back. And this time she’s discussing the benefits of having her now-2-year-old son, Rowdy, follow the same controversial diet she follows herself — in which a day of meals can consist of a 10-banana smoothie, five mangoes, and a huge salad.

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“There are definitely times when we’re at other children’s birthday parties or family gatherings or something where there will be a lot of other food that we don’t eat, but [Rowdy’s] palate is trained for the fruits and vegetables and he absolutely loves the fruits and vegetables,” Anthony said on Wednesday during an appearance on The Morning Show in Australia. “He gets absolute joy out of eating a cucumber.”

Anthony has said in the past that she is an adherent of the 80/10/10 Diet, created by longtime athlete and trainer Douglas Graham and consisting of a raw fruit, veggie, and nut diet providing 80 percent carbs, 10 percent fat, and 10 percent protein. Regarding attacks in social media that it was an “extreme” way to eat while she was pregnant, she said Wednesday, “I think it’s the most normal way that the human race can possibly eat. I think it’s quite extreme for people to, during a pregnancy, eat a tub of ice cream. I think that’s a lot more extreme than eating four, five bananas for breakfast.”

When the hosts pressed her about whether her son could possibly be getting enough protein and fat this way, she said, “There’s protein in every single fruit and vegetable, and if you eat it in absolute abundance, until you’re absolutely satisfied, you get plenty of all the nutrients you need, and all the protein.” Anthony added that there are “beautiful fats in avocados, in natural oils like coconut oil and hemp oil, hemp seeds, chia seeds, nuts,” providing “all the beautiful essential fatty acids.”

And this time around, unlike last time, the majority of the feedback has so far been positive. “Plenty of kids are raised vegan and it’s pretty safe to say they’re doing better than kids munching on cheeseburgers. I can’t believe people would even judge someone who is providing a nutritious diet to their child,” noted one of many commenters on The Morning Show’s Facebook post. “Good on her for showing her children a healthy option. People will always criticize and pull apart what they don’t know,” noted another.

One eagle-eyed commenter, however, pointed out that Anthony may not actually be a raw vegan anymore, based on meal photos she’s featured on Instagram — which have lately included items like cooked rice, baked beans, tofu, and even a veggie burger and fries. And when it comes to ensuring her toddler’s nutrition, notes vegan dietitian Brenda Davis, those thoughtful additions make all the difference.

“We actually don’t advise parents to be doing 100 percent raw for children, simply because the evidence isn’t there,” Davis, the author of both Becoming Vegan and Becoming Raw, tells Yahoo Beauty. Position papers from both the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Academy of Pediatrics, on the other hand, are both OK, based on research, with kids being vegan, as long as it’s done thoughtfully enough to include all essential nutrients.

“It is possible to design a raw diet that would support the health of a child reasonably well, but it would be a challenge for me — and I’m a vegan nutritionist,” Davis says. The nutrients of concern, she explains, would be iron, zinc, vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium, iodine, and protein — particularly with the 80/10/10 diet, which stops at 10 percent protein, while children need more like 40 percent to ensure proper cell development, she says.

A typical vegan diet, on the other hand — which would encompass legumes, tofu, grains, and more — would leave only one main concern, vitamin B12, and it can be gotten through supplements.

The difference between how adults and children are affected by extreme diets, Davis explains, is the point. “When we’ve compared health-conscious populations, vegans do better than non-vegans — there is less cancer, less diabetes, less heart and kidney disease. And the ultimate goal of a diet for people in their adult years is to minimize the risk of diseases that kill most of us,” she says. “But in childhood, the primary goal is to ensure adequate growth and development. And that’s much different.”

As for why some people feel angry or threatened when they hear about raw or vegan diets, Davis suggests that carnivores feel a need to hear that eating meat is a necessity, as it justifies the idea that they “love animals but eat animals.” So until there are definitive results of studies that have followed vegans throughout their lifetimes — research currently in the works with the Adventist Health Study as well as EPIC-Oxford, out of the U.K. — then “the vegan diet is really on trial in the eyes of the world.”

Anthony’s take on the controversy, she said, is this: “People think that healthy eating is really complicated, and I show it to be quite simple — and people think it shouldn’t be that easy.” She added, “The way society pushes how kids should eat, with Happy Meals and milk, is just a huge lie. But people think, ‘Oh, she must be lying. How can you raise a kid without milk?’”

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