My sister became vegan long before she got pregnant.. It was never about fashion, detox or wellness. Their reason was always animals, cruelty and the discomfort of understanding that behind many everyday products there is suffering that we normally prefer not to look at too much.
When years later she decided to become a mother, that decision did not disappear. On the contrary: it became even more important to her. My niece grew up vegan since pregnancy and something that always caught my attention was seeing how many people reacted as if that were strange, extreme or even irresponsible..
The conversation around vegan moms is almost never just about food. It’s about what they represent. Because a woman who decides not to participate in certain forms of animal consumption inevitably ends up questioning something deeper: the way in which we normalize violence towards other living beings.s while we constantly talk about empathy, care and love. And that tends to make people much more uncomfortable than people want to admit.
In Latin America, meat consumption has practically doubled in recent decadesaccording to FAO data. Mexico is also one of the largest meat producers in the region and millions of animals are raised and slaughtered each year within industrial systems that remain practically invisible to most people. All of this happens so normalized that we rarely think about it, until someone decides to stop participating.
I have also heard something very particular from many women who go through motherhood and veganism at the same time: that pregnancy or breastfeeding completely changed the way they perceive other mammals.especially to cows used by the dairy industry. Because milk stops feeling abstract when you have fed another human being from your own body. Suddenly questions appear that previously seemed distant. Questions about motherhood, separation, reproduction and vulnerability.
That doesn’t mean that being a vegan mom is automatic or improvised. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics maintains that a well-planned diet based on vegetables, seeds and fruits is appropriate for all stages of life, including childhood and pregnancy. Of course it requires information and attention to specific nutrients such as vitamin B12, iron and omega 3, But the problem is not veganism itself, but the enormous amount of misinformation that still exists around it.
The funny thing is that we continue to question vegan mothers much more than entire industries. In Latin America, around 30 percent of girls and boys live overweight or obeseaccording to data from UNICEF and PAHO.
We live surrounded by ultra-processed foods, aggressive children’s marketing, and food systems that are deeply harmful to animals, people, and the environment. And yet, for many people, what is radical is still a mother who decides not to consume animals.
Maybe because vegan mothers do something that is very uncomfortable: they make visible what the system works best when it remains invisible.
