One of us has three children and two of them are picky. When dinner shrinks, the useful question is which food actually left the plate, not whether to buy a vitamin.
Meat is a common one to lose. It is also several nutrients in one bite, and they do not all vanish together.
The short answer
- Vitamin B12 occurs naturally in animal foods. Eggs and dairy can cover it. A plate with none of those needs a planned source.
- Iron from plants is absorbed less readily than iron from meat. That is a kitchen problem, not a shopping slogan.
- Our product contains no iron. It does contain B12. Those are two different sentences.
- A child who still eats eggs, yoghurt, beans and a bit of fruit with meals is not in the same situation as a child who eats none of those.
Meat is several jobs, not one
Take the chicken off the plate and you have not created one problem. You have taken apart a bundle: B12, the kind of iron the body takes up easily, some zinc, some protein.
B12 is the awkward one. Almost no plant food gives you a source you can count on, unless it is fortified. EFSA's adequate intake is 4 µg a day for adults, with lower figures in childhood that still have to come from somewhere. Eggs, milk, yoghurt and cheese are ordinary ways to get it. A house that has dropped all of those, not only meat, has something to plan.
Iron is a different job. Beans, dark leaves, nuts and fortified cereals carry it. The body takes up less of that kind than the iron in meat, and vitamin C at the same meal helps. Pepper, tomato or fruit with the beans is a real move. Buying a multinutrient and assuming iron is handled is not.
We have written the iron article already. The sentence that matters here is the same one: we do not sell iron. If iron is the worry, this product is the wrong product.
What the rest of the week can still do
Zinc, iodine and vitamin D get named in the same breath as meat. They do not all belong there.
Iodine comes readily from milk, from sea fish, and from iodised salt where a country uses it. In Ireland, dairy and fish do more for this than a steak.
Vitamin D is mostly a latitude and indoor-life problem, not a meat problem. Skin makes little of it in a northern winter whatever is on the plate. The NHS advice on vitamin D in children is about sunlight and season, not about steak.
Zinc is in meat, and also in pulses, nuts, seeds and dairy. A week with plants and dairy is not empty of it.
So the short list is actually short. B12 if animal foods have gone. Iron as a food-and-GP question. Vitamin D as its own file.
A phase is not a diet
A child who refuses beef for a month and still eats chicken, eggs and yoghurt is not vegetarian. They are being fussy about one food. That is common, it often passes, and it does not need a supplement strategy.
A child who has eaten no meat, fish, eggs or dairy for months is in a different category. You can see that without a laboratory. It is also the point at which a GP or dietitian is more use than an article.
We're not going to give you a checklist. A week of food tells you more, and a GP can do the rest. Midnight googling does not.
What we sell, and what we don't
Pocket Kids, Teens and Adults carry B12 at a high percentage of the adult NRV. That is a real amount. It is also the nutrient we can talk about without pretending.
They carry no iron. If you arrived here because someone said vegetarian children should take "a vitamin with iron", look at the label. Ours is not that vitamin.
A daily multinutrient can sit beside a diet that has dropped meat and kept eggs and dairy. It cannot replace a conversation about iron, and we will not write as if it could.
What we'd actually do this week
- Write down a week of food, as it happens. See whether eggs, dairy or fish are still there.
- If they are, B12 may already be covered. Check the label of any fortified cereal or plant drink as well, so you are not counting twice or counting nothing.
- Put a vitamin C food on the plate with the beans, if meat has gone and beans have come in.
- Keep vitamin D as a separate question, especially in winter in Ireland.
- If all animal foods have gone, or you are simply uneasy, that is a GP appointment. Bring the week of food. It makes the ten minutes far more useful.
Sources
- EFSA, dietary reference values for vitamin B12, 2015
- EFSA, dietary reference values for iron, 2015
- NHS, vitamins for children
- FSAI, food supplements
Written by Lina and Stanislava, founders of MyDailyPocket. This is here to be useful, not to replace your GP or paediatrician. No supplement is a substitute for a varied, balanced diet. Stay within the dose on the pack.
