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There are a lot of people who are vegan due to their religious beliefs and their children are just fine. It would seem there are other factors involved in the health decline/death of the kids in the article. Regardless, eliminating meat products doesn't render a vegan diet inferior in the nutrition department.
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.
Okay, omnivores on the extreme end of the carnivore side of the Bell Curve, if you prefer.
And I've tried a vegetarian diet more than once, and I'm one of those compulsive researchers, have been from birth, practically, so trust me, it was balanced. Makes me sick as a dog, whereas if I eat a diet high in animal protein, I get healthy. So, ultimately, I decided that rather than listen to what other people tell me ought to be a healthy diet for me because THEY want to eat it, I should listen to the real expert, my body, about what makes it healthiest, and do that. And if they get all superior about it, I just do what that attitude deserves, and laugh at them.
There are a lot of people who are vegan due to their religious beliefs and their children are just fine. It would seem there are other factors involved in the health decline/death of the kids in the article. Regardless, eliminating meat products doesn't render a vegan diet inferior in the nutrition department.
I've never heard of one, but there are Jains who are vegetarian. I've worked in department that had 1/2 Jains and that was so nice. I never had to worry about what was for lunch (for lunch meetings). They were always on top of it.
I highly doubt we started out as preditors due to our lack of speed and our lacking of a set of true carnivore teeth. Our teeth are most like chimps, their diet is primarily vegitarian. Most protien is provided by eating insects. We were hunters yes, but we were also gatherers, and not sedentary either. Early man went were the food was and the food most accessible and easy to obtain was mainly from some sort of vegetation. What could be found was collected, as much as could be carried I would imagine.
I feel pretty confident that the nomadic people along the Nile were eating marshmellow and the natives in the US were eating acorns and in Asia, everyone was eating rice.
These things did not have to be domesticated to be harvested.
I missed this earlier and wanted to comment fairly briefly.
I gather that you probably understand this, but I think it bears mentioning that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees. Chimps and humans have a common ancestor, but it seems that some portion of the population of that common ancestor specialized in forested areas and eventually morphed into chimpanzees and some other portion specialized in savannah-like grassland and eventually morphed into bipedal apes. They have been on their own evolutionary journey away from that common ancestor for as long as we have. In that respect, if we have differentiated to the point that we have opposable thumbs, abstract reasoning, bipedalism, complex tool-making and complex language, why would we assume that our diets should be identical. Furthermore, I'm not certain that chimpanzee diet can be accurately characterized as "primarily vegatarian". Chimps can and do hunt and scavenge meat when the opportunity is present. When edible insects are abundant, they show a definite preference for insects over any autotrophic food. They commonly prey on baboons and will kill and eat anything that can't get away from them. This is probably pretty similar to the way our primitive bipedal ancestors lived; scavenging meat, throwing rocks en masse to drive feliform predators off of their kills, eating insects and generally taking advantage of any opportunity that the environment presented. Somewhere along the way, those bipedal apes managed a brain capable of innately understanding mechanical advantage, being able to "see" that there was a blade in a chunk of chert, flint or obsidian. That was a long time ago, before there was anyone on earth that you or I would recognize face-to-face as "human" (and by the time there WAS a species that you or I would recognize face-to-face as human, bipedal apes had been cooking with fire, building tools and living as hunter-gatherers for a very long time). The evolution of our cranio-facial anatomy was probably influenced by behavioral evolutions like cooking and toolmaking. We don't need big canines because we can sharpen a stick into an awl. We don't need thick tooth enamel and heavy cranial muscles because we can use two rocks as a mortar and pestle. We don't need shearing bicuspids because we can knap a blade from a piece of flint. We look different and eat differently to chimpanzees because we ARE different. It's not apples and apples. In any event, I also doubt that our line started as an "obligate predator", but by the time there were people that look and behave essentially the same way that we do today, I think they were.
Last edited by Cleonidas; 07-02-2014 at 09:59 AM..
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?
No, feeding a child a vegan diet is NOT child abuse as long as the child is getting proper nutrients. If a parent wants to raise a child vegan from birth, they need to talk to their pediatrician and maybe get a consultation with a pediatric dietitian to ensure the child is getting everything they need. The mother may also have to take supplements if she's nursing.
There's nothing abusive about raising your child as a vegan. These are isolated instances of people being idiots and their children paying the price.
Depends on if not getting the foods and stuff have obvious adverse effects on the kids health. In the event the parent can make them vegan and keep them as healthy as any other kid their age, it'd be far to fascist of a gov to demand they stop. Generally speaking, I figure it's more well off people that tend to be Vegan's, which means they'd be capable of the excessive monitoring it requires. I tried being vegan for a week and the price of things was absurd.
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?
vegan is not a religion, it is a choice. a parent forcing a child to be vegan, would be considered child abuse.
There is no way for a baby to get its proper nutrients via a vegan diet. Some of the very basic nutrients that children need are found only in animal products (especially D vitamins and B12) or are only supplied adequately from animal products (especially EPA and DHA fatty acids).
All are vital for brain and nervous system development. While it is possible for the body to derive EPA and DHA from the alpha-linoleic acid supplied in plants, it requires supplementation and a lot of metabolic work for that to occur. An infant/toddler is not really capable of that kind of metabolic expenditure, so they quickly deteriorate if not provided the composite animal sources.
This is great.
Infants shouldn't eat anything before they're 6 months old (at least). They get everything they need from breast milk or from formula which is (processed, stripped of all nutrients) then fortified and may or may not contain actual dairy products. Until a kid can sit up on their own, have at least a tooth or two, start to follow your fork like they're watching tennis, and have the coordination to pick things up and put it in their mouth then they shouldn't be eating solids. When kids do start eating solids it's usually some variation of peas & carrots and unless you're pureeing the stuff yourself it's also fortified. Veganism is completely irrelevant to any breastfed infant.
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Considering that the average child doubles in size over its first 2-3 years of existence and that its brain develops much of its cognitive ability during the first 5-6 years, how is it even a question whether depriving him or her of the basic building blocks required for sustained neural development is child abuse? It most definitely is. Vegans and vegetarians are very good at convincing themselves that this isn't the case but, as always, mother nature wins.
Moderator cut: Against forum guidelines B12 is in eggs, cheese, yogurt, etc. A school aged kid gets their RDA for B12 in one bowl of cereal. I know a lot of vegetarians and no one takes B12 supplements. I know a few vegans as well and I don't think it's an issue for any of them because so much of the processed food out there is already fortified with it - and the USDA recommends that fortification not because of vegans but because the average american wasn't getting enough vitamin D, calcium, B12, etc in their 'normal' diet.
Pretty much any hard core vegan will say that supplements are probably necessary. And vegan doesn't mean healthy, it's an animal rights ideology. If you want to eat mostly plants and very little animal that's fine, but most people are going to benefit from a little animal, even if it's just some dairy and eggs. That's a fact nobody can argue with, but some people find distasteful for ETHICAL reasons (again, not HEALTH).
There are people who can't be healthy on a vegan diet.
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