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Hey there, it's Jen, and I want to tell you the story about why I actually went back to uni to study nutrition. Because honestly, it wasn't some big planned career move. It came from a moment when I realized I don't actually know what the right thing is here. So when I was pregnant with my first son, my husband got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and it was really bad. Like he could hardly walk properly. We lived about 45 minutes from town, and I remember genuinely thinking, what if I go into labor and he can't actually drive me to the hospital? So yeah, it was bad. Now at the same time, the medications that they were wanting to put him on, I was really hesitant about because he has a massive cancer risk in his family, and at the time the drugs were had really strong links to cancer. So I was like, okay, can we find another option? So I started researching and I came across the whole food plant-based diet. You know, people like Joel Furman and some of the other doctors, and it sounded like it was really worth a try. So we went all in and went super strict whole food plant-based diet. And within about six weeks, my husband was walking pain-free again, and it was amazing. I was such a cheerleader for it, and I thought that this is the answer for everyone. But then, of course, we had a baby, life happened, everything got harder. So we kind of went in and out over the next few years. Sometimes we were super healthy vegan, sometimes we were super not healthy vegan, and don't judge me, sometimes we even went paleo. Because the reality is that level of strict is just a lot when you have a newborn. I mean, it's a lot most of the time, really. Now, by the time I was pregnant with my second son, we were basically vegan. And when he was born, he was basically raised vegan from the start. Everything was pretty much fine until we got to about six months, and people started commenting that he was really small. And I would just put it off because I'm really quite short, so I was like, well, maybe just have my jeans instead of my husband's six foot three jeans. But he did seem pretty small, and that's when all the noise starts creeping in, right? All the stuff that people say about vegan kids that they don't grow properly, they need red meat for iron, they need dairy for calcium. And my family are country Australian farmers and on farms and stuff, so there was a lot of that coming from them. But at the same time, I was reading all this stuff in the plant-based groups that were saying, no, it's completely healthy. You can get everything that you need, and kids can thrive. It is totally fine. So I was sort of sitting there going, but why is my kid not growing? Then his 12-month checkup happened, and so I took him and they measured him, and his weight and his height were not even on the growth scales. Like, you know how people talk about, oh, he's only 3%. No, like we were, I don't know, like negative number percentiles. I I don't know. I don't know how you describe how low he was. And I can remember just sitting there and just feeling the deepest levels of shame that I had done this to my child, that I had so stuffed up and I had let my ideologies do this. And then when I was sitting there, the nurse said to me, the best thing for kids like this is cheese. And I was like, really? Like, there's so much saturated fat in cheese, and dairy is not good, and there are links to cancer and stuff, and but a health professional is sitting here telling me that it's the best thing for my child. And it was then that I realized that I had no idea what was true. I did not know who to believe, and I didn't know what my child needed. And I really, really needed to figure that out. So I ended up doing something that some people might say is a little bit crazy, but hey, it's kind of the thing I do. So I was an engineer and I was on maternity leave, and I decided not to go back to my engineering job. Instead, I decided to go back to uni and study nutrition and find out for myself, once and for all, if a vegan diet is healthy for my kids. And I also made a really deliberate decision. I didn't just go and find a vegan nutrition course. I went to a conventional university and I chose a conventional human nutrition degree because I didn't want biased information. I wanted to know full stop whether this was good for my kids. So I went back, I studied nutrition, I majored in children's nutrition, I did a lot around food behavior, which is something I will talk about later. And honestly, I am so glad that I did. Because what I learned was firstly that vegan diets absolutely can be healthy for kids. It is, they are fully supported by the dietary guidelines, and there is so much science to back them up. In fact, most of the courses that I did taught that we should be eating as plant-based as possible. But now there is a big caveat. They do need to be well planned because the reality is there are nutrients like iron and zinc and calcium that you can absolutely get from plant-based foods, but you do have to be intentional about it. And that was the biggest shift for me. It's not that vegan diets are the problem, it's that I wasn't being given the right information for me and my kids and my circumstances. And so that's actually what led me to start Healthy Vegan Kids. Now it's looked a little bit different over the years. It's been a blog, courses, recipe book, a few pivots along the way, but the reason behind it is still the same. I remember how I felt sitting in that appointment, feeling completely lost, and then how much relief I felt once I actually understood what my kids needed. And that's what I want for you. I want you to feel confident that being vegan can be the best way to raise your kids, and that they can absolutely thrive. And so that's what I teach how to raise kids on a vegan diet.