Parents who put children on strict vegan diets have been slammed by US health experts as unethical.

Scientist Lindsay Allen, of the US Agricultural Research Service, attacked parents, saying the diet could harm children’s development.

Sticking to a diet purely based on vegetables meant children would be missing out on nutrients which could only be found in animal sourced foods, she told a Washington conference.

However, the Vegan Society has dismissed the claims, saying its research showed vegans were often healthier than meat eaters.

Professor Allen said: “There have been sufficient studies clearly showing that when women avoid all animal foods, their babies are born small, they grow very slowly and they are developmentally retarded, possibly permanently.

“If you're talking about feeding young children, pregnant women and lactating women, I would go as far as to say it is unethical to withhold these foods [animal source foods] during that period of life,” reported the BBC.

She was especially critical of parents who imposed a vegan lifestyle on their children, which denied them milk, cheese, butter and meat.

“There's absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans,” she said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting.

According to her research among African schoolchildren showed as little as two spoonfuls of meat a day was enough to provide essential nutrients.

The 544 children studied had been raised on diets chiefly consisting of starchy, low-nutrition corn and bean staples lacking these micro-nutrients.

Over two years, some of the children were given 2oz supplements of meat each day, equivalent to about two spoonfuls of mince.

Two other groups received either a cup of milk a day or an oil supplement containing the same amount of energy. The diet of a fourth group was left unaltered.

She said the changes seen in the children given the meat, and to a lesser extent the milk or oil, were dramatic, with the children growing more and performing better at problem-solving and intelligence tests than the others.

She accepted that adults could avoid animal foods if they took the right supplements.

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