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Maybe the mom was feeding some vegan formula, though frankly I can't imagine what would be wrong with that. Lots of babies on soy formula.
My niece was on soy formula even after she turned 1. She's 2 now but I still think she can handle regular milk plus there's a lot of foods she can't eat as well.
That's a good point, if the mom wasn't giving her breast milk or was giving her something of spurious nutritional value in the name of veganism, that would be abuse or neglect.
Babies and young kids need a lot of fat/cholesterol to keep their brains developing, among other things, and if you can't provide the milk yourself, you shouldn't be on a vegan moral high horse about it, and should be getting the baby what they need regardless of whether or not the label looks like a science experiment. Remember, back in the day, these were the children that failed to thrive, and took sick and passed at a young age. Walk around an old cemetery if you don't believe me.
I agree with a lot of what you said except the meats. Humans can and have survived fine without eating meat.
And humans can and have and do survive fine eating almost entirely meat-based diets (Inuits, as one example).
From a health perspective, a few people truly fall on one end of the Bell Curve (veganism) or the other (carnivore). Most people fall somewhere in the middle and do best on a mixed diet. Sadly, there are people on both ends who make a religion out of what works for them and insist, fallaciously, that if everyone ate just like them, everyone would be perfectly healthy, when nothing could be further from the truth.
And humans can and have and do survive fine eating almost entirely meat-based diets (Inuits, as one example).
From a health perspective, a few people truly fall on one end of the Bell Curve (veganism) or the other (carnivore). Most people fall somewhere in the middle and do best on a mixed diet. Sadly, there are people on both ends who make a religion out of what works for them and insist, fallaciously, that if everyone ate just like them, everyone would be perfectly healthy, when nothing could be further from the truth.
I agree, I was merely pointing out that you don't have to eat meat to survive. BTW I have seen heard of several vegetarians that still had health issues. I think no matter what you eat, just do it in moderation and you should be fine.
And humans can and have and do survive fine eating almost entirely meat-based diets (Inuits, as one example).
From a health perspective, a few people truly fall on one end of the Bell Curve (veganism) or the other (carnivore). Most people fall somewhere in the middle and do best on a mixed diet. Sadly, there are people on both ends who make a religion out of what works for them and insist, fallaciously, that if everyone ate just like them, everyone would be perfectly healthy, when nothing could be further from the truth.
The only reason Inuit diets "worked" is because their diets included marine mammal livers are raw organ meat. Humans cannot be "carnivores" because of the inability to make vitamin C and other essentials like vitamin A. Inuit people got just enough of these nutrients via organ meats like brain, which the vast majority of Americans won't eat, to hold them until the summer months when they would then resume a omnivorous diet.
So no, no humans can be heathy pretending to be carnivores.
I wouldn't label it as abuse, because you can still get the same nutrients from vegan foods. However, as a growing kid, you do need a lot of animal by-products to grow, and meats.
Are you serious? You think humans evolved the ability to eat grains and fruit 10,000 years ago?
Humans have been foraging for the majority of their diet since Homo erectus some 2 millions years ago. If anything the need for dietary vitamin C and a haustrated colon suggest a more herbivorous primate origin for our diets as opposed to carnivorous. Additionally, prior to that 10k mark, many if not most human populations were primarily tropical in location, meaning they had year round access to a variety of WILD fruits, plants, grains, etc.
Make no mistake, much of this gathering, was also protein targeted (insects, eggs, etc.) but you are so far off base with your timeline as to be laughable.
I'm not sure how you concluded that I implied that humans evolved the ability to eat grains and fruit 10,000 years ago, but let me elaborate. Around 10,000 years ago humans began to domesticate and improve cereal grains, vegetables and fruit from wild stock into the produce that we know today. A wild apple is tiny, hard, relatively bitter and there is little flesh and a lot of seeds. A wild banana is absolutely nothing like a cavendish and would probably make you gag. Wild stone fruit will make you vomit uncontrollably. Wild root vegetables are tiny, bitter and full of alkaloids. Wild legumes are almost universally poisonous or anti-metabolic. Wild grains like rice and something similar to einkorn wheat were about the only edible grains, but they require a lot of effort to cultivate and process in meaningful quantities. Things like the barley and wheat that we know today are products of human husbandry, not nature. While the claim that "most human populations were primarily tropical in location" 10,000 years ago is dubious at best (humans had colonized every continent except antarctica), even so there certainly would not be year round access to a variety of fruits, plants, grains, etc. Without agricultural civilization, your autotrophic food sources would be more like berries and wild greens in the summer, mast in the fall, then forbs, mushrooms and greens in the spring. I don't know about the winter; tree bark maybe? How many of those greens, berries and mushrooms will kill you if you eat them? By contrast, your ancestors always had access to arthropods, fish, fowl and game. Our progenitors didn't evolve the ability to fashion tools, set traps, "cut sign" and think in a very advanced and abstract manner to better pick fruit.
About dietary vitamin C requirements... The hows and whys of primates losing the ability to synthesize vitamin C is a little beyond my comprehension, but I'm not sure how that would point to herbivorous origins (and, really, all primates have some animal source protein and fat component in the diet - we're an omnivorous clade, generally speaking). I think that guinea pigs, bats and primates are the mammals that lack the ability to synthesize vitamin C. I'm not sure that there is a correlation between diet and the proliferation of a mutation that results in the loss of vitamin C synthesis; it may just be a fluke or a kluge that wasn't ultimately a deadly mutation. Also note that the fresh muscle tissue and organ meat of most animals contains vitamin C. The first thing that the Karankawa would eat in the winter after killing a deer was the raw liver. Scandanavians would keep a barrel of cod livers and allow them to ferment over winter, eating a ladle full daily to ward off scurvy.
About comparative digestive anatomy... I don't think it should be surprising that we share a lot of morphological similarity with other primates, but I don't think that any conclusions can really be drawn from the diets of the other great apes, either. Our guts are generalist guts, but you can see that we've taken some steps towards faunivory that gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans have not. They are all currently using the fermentation chamber that protrudes from the caecum, whereas we call ours the vermiform appendix.
In any event, it wasn't my intention to imply that humans didn't evolve the ability to eat grains, legumes, fruit and vegetables until 10,000 years ago, but rather that the abundance of delicious, nutrient-dense produce that we enjoy today didn't exist until the establishment of agricultural civilization.
I was just reading this article about how a 12 day old baby was taken away from his/hers mother because she wanted them on a "vegan diet". She took the baby to the doctors and the doctor said the child was dehydrated and not growing. The mother refused medical treatment stating her family is "vegan for religious reasons". Because the baby was severely dehydrated the doctor said it was imperative to take the child to the hospital ASAP., and gave her medicine to give her child.
She refused to take the child to the hospital stating she "didn't think the child was dehydrated" and wanted a second opinion from a "natural" doctor. She also stated how she purchases organic formula for the baby to take in place of the medicine the doctor prescribed. When the cops asked if it was safe for a newborn she said "well its organic so it must be".
The article also states other children who have died or been sick from "vegan diets". Including a six week old who weighed only 3 lbs after being given apple juice and soy formula. Or a 9 month old with asthma who was denied medications and was breastfed instead.
I'm wondering what are your thoughts?
A few quick things. Vegan is a diet that doesn't eat any part of an animal. Soy formula is fine and is commonly used for babies. The issue likely is that the kid was not being fed enough, which is abuse.
Also, what idiot gives a 6 week old baby apple juice? At that age, they should only have formula/ breast milk.
A few quick things. Vegan is a diet that doesn't eat any part of an animal. Soy formula is fine and is commonly used for babies. The issue likely is that the kid was not being fed enough, which is abuse.
Also, what idiot gives a 6 week old baby apple juice? At that age, they should only have formula/ breast milk.
I guess, we can't tell if the formula the mom got from her Holistic doctor was sufficient; I understand that there are acceptable soy based formulas out there, but we don't know if that's what she had.
I think the editors decided "Idiotic mother almost kills newborn" is a lot less click worthy than tying in a lifestyle that could be somewhat controversial.
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