Are health professionals ‘equipped’ to support vegan mothers in the UK?

This article investigates the extent to which health professionals are equipped to support vegan mothers in the UK and how stigma plays a part in this issue. Veganism has grown in popularity in the UK in recent years (as well as in many other countries worldwide) with the environmental, health and animal welfare benefits of the lifestyle becoming more widely researched and publicised. However, research into the topic of veganism has highlighted that, up until recently, many vegans experienced stigma for their beliefs, with the UK being no exception. Similarly, a growing body of research has highlighted the long-accepted and gendered issue of mum-shaming, whereby mothers, as opposed to fathers, are disproportionately criticised and blamed for their parenting skills. In this article we want to examine the experience of women who fit into both categories of veganism and motherhood in their encounters with health professionals during pregnancy and while raising their babies on a vegan diet. Adopting semi-structured interviews, this study gauged the opinions of a sample of vegan mothers, non-vegan mothers, midwives and paediatricians. Our findings indicate that in the UK, healthcare professionals are not equipped to provide vegan mothers with nutritional advice. This was found to be due to a lack of understanding of veganism, which, in some cases, fuelled negative ideas on veganism and led to stigma towards vegan pregnant women and vegan mothers. All healthcare professionals interviewed stressed the severe lack of training on vegan nutrition, as well as nutrition more generally.