Can You Feed Children Meat During the 9 Days?

As a vegetarian, the restriction against eating meat during the 9 days has hardly hit my radar.  In fact, it makes eating at friends’ houses even more exciting than normal because there is often some dairy treat.

Normally, as a vegetarian, I get asked some tough questions, but those have changed recently.  Now I mostly get asked one question: But aren’t you going to allow your son to eat meat?

The answer is, I am not really comfortable with it.  From my research, I don’t think it’s healthy.  And if it’s not healthy for me to eat it, then why would I feed it to my child?  I had a healthy pregnancy without adding meat to my diet and Akiva is growing fast and healthy fed exclusively on breastmilk produced on vegetarian food.  I simply cannot think of why I would want to introduce meat to his diet!

However, it seems that the rabbis of old disagree with me to a certain extent.

All poskim agree that healthy children above the age of 7 should not be given meat… but what about those younger?

All poskim agree that children under the age of 3 are allowed to have meat. So it seems that the rabbis believe strongly that meat is necessary for the health of children under the age of three.

Some Poskim are lenient for children between the ages of 3 and 7. Other Poskim, including the Mishna Berura (Siman 551:70), are stringent and don’t allow it.

So it seems that the rabbis agree that meat is actually necessary for the health of a child below the age of three. After that, it’s debatable.

Personally, I can’t find any reason why a child, under the age of three or not, would need meat for his/her health.  The biggest concern people seem to have is that the child won’t get enough protein.  However, protein in a vegetarian diet is available in many forms – there is no need to eat meat, not during the 9 days or any other time.  Tofu, nuts, beans, and legumes are all fantastic sources of protein and they are all vegan.  Plus, you avoid harmful antibiotics and hormones added to animal products.  Trust me, your children will continue to grow just fine without the addition of bovine growth hormone to their diets!  (If you’re vegetarian, it is worthwhile to find free range eggs and dairy. And no matter what you should buy organic to avoid harmful pesticides and toxins – no child needs those!)

Perhaps in olden times when these rabbis were writing their decisions, children really did need meat to maintain their health.  Perhaps they did not have access to foods like nuts or beans on a regular basis and eggs were too valuable to be eaten.  But for most of us, this is no longer the situation.  So I would question whether children today really need to be fed meat during the 9 days – or at all.