Table 6.

Main features of studies assessing vegetarian and vegan weaning regimens

Author, Year	Study Design	Sample size	Results
Bivi, 2021 [51]	Observational study	National cross-sectional survey on 176 Italian parents of children following a vegan diet	Nearly 72% of the children enrolled in the study had been on a vegan diet since weaning. Primary care paediatricians were often (70.8%) perceived as sceptical or against a vegan diet. Nearly 70% of the parents relied on medical dietitians, and 28.2% on nutritionists/dietitians for dietary counselling.
Baldassarre, 2020 [52]	Observational study	Survey on 360 Italian families to assess the prevalence of vegetarian and vegan weaning	Nearly 10% of infants were weaned according to a vegetarian or vegan diet. Almost half of parents perceived their primary care paediatrician as unable to provide sufficient information on unconventional CF and 77.4% of parents reported the paediatrician’s resistance towards alternative CF methods.
Farella, 2020 [65]	Case report	n.a.	Case report on a 22-month-old boy with failure to thrive probably due to an unbalanced vegetarian diet. Difficulty in establishing a therapeutic alliance between parents who follow alternative regimens and the paediatrician is highlighted.

CF complementary feeding.