Children 'harmed' by vegan diets

My dad has been a vegetarian for the last 40 years. He's almost 60 but barely looks 45. I was raised vegetarian but I started eating meat on occasion in my early teens. Now I rarely eat meat. The majority of the members of the Seventh-day Adventist church are vegetarian. Health studies show that Seventh-day Adventists live an average of 11 years longer than people in first world society that were meat eaters.


Its nice to have meat as an occasional treat but you don't need meat to live a healthy life.

 

not sure where the seventh day adventists came into it but good luck to them and their 11 years extra....

A balanced diet is what it comes down to, a bit of everything in moderation, including moderation and all that...You eat sensibly and it don't matter whether you are vegan, carniverous or anything....I think we can all see the bias in the article and meat eating should not be based on a health decision but more on a moral reason...Unless you are a lion..and then I would stick to those wilderbeast..

 

poor wilderbeast

 

I would like to apologise for the previous post and make it clear that the author of the above statement was by no means discriminating against wilderbeast....In fact the author wishes wilderbeast a long and prosperous life....Any distres caused by this to any wilderbeast living or dead was unintentional

he he

 

PRESS RELEASE
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From the Vegan Society
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22nd February 2005​

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VEGAN DIETS AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT: WHAT'S THE REAL EVIDENCE?

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The claim that milk and meat are vital to children's development, which swept though the media earlier this week, originated from an American press release based mainly on a two-year study of 544 undernourished Kenyan children, completed in December 2000 and published in the Journal of Nutrition in November 2003. (1)



As usual, the original information evolved beyond all recognition as it moved from scientific paper to press release to soundbite: "There's absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans", proclaimed certain sections of the media. (2)



The scientific paper compared groups of Kenyan children given three food supplements: meat, milk and vegetable oil. Three measures of mental development were taken: Raven's visuo-spatial test, verbal meaning and arithmetic. On all three measures, the vegetable oil group beat the milk group and on two measures the vegetable oil group beat the meat group.





"Even on the paper cited, the soundbite attributed to Professor Allen is clearly far fetched" said Stephen Walsh, author of Plant Based Nutrition and Health. But there is far stronger evidence than this that vegan diets support healthy development in children. In the UK a study of 39 vegan children found that "the growth and development of children reared on both vegan and vegetarian diets appears normal." (3)

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In the USA, a study of 400 vegan children reached the same conclusion. (4)



Both these studies were carried out in the 1980s and the results should be well known to any scientist presuming to comment on vegan diets and child development.

The soundbite that went the rounds this week comes from taking the results of the one test on undernourished Kenyan children where meat seemed to have a better impact than vegetable oil and ignoring all the contrary evidence both from the Kenyan study and from direct studies of western vegans.



"This is not science but blatant spin", said Vegan Society Chair Alex Bourke, "and representatives of the media who have uncritically passed on the soundbite have been sadly misled."

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For further information on the benefits of a vegan diet for animals, people and the environment – both in Africa and in the West – see Plant Based Nutrition and Health or contact a Vegan Society spokesperson (details overleaf).








REFERENCES:



(1) http://www.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/133/11/3965S.pdf





(2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4282257.stm





http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2005/0218micronutrients.shtml





(3) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt= abstract&list_uids=3414589

(4) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt= Abstract&list_uids=2771551





CONTACTS:





Alex Bourke, Vegan Society Chair, 07956 169214





Sandra Hood BSc (Hons), State Registered Dietitian Author of Raising your Vegan Infant - With Confidence, 01424 427 393





Stephen Walsh PhD, Vegan Society Nutrition Spokesperson Author of Plant Based Nutrition and Health, 07967 361510





PUBLICATIONS:





Plant Based Nutrition and Health, published September 2003. For review copy, call 020 7928 7459 or email





Also for information on Raising your Vegan Infant - With Confidence, to be published later this year.

 

I'm not going to really go deep into this debate but I must say that this has moved from talking about whether a VEGAN diet is healthy to whether an ominvoric life or vegitarinism is better.
One quick point. Vegitarinism is one of the healthiest diets, one I wouldn't be able to do because even on supplements I need to get more life essentials that meat provides better than vegatables. Vegan however, even people I know who used to be vegans and went back to vegitarinism, is actually worse than omnivoric lifestyle. Mostly because they won't take supplements and there are a few vitamins and minerals, including a few ammino acids our bodies do not produce (if you've ever heard of rice bellies, that will explain a little). Also calcium is needed, and no offense to soy and calcium supplements, the best way to do this is working is with milk.
Finally, this isn't talking about adults who might have started off with a healthy diet because they had the heakthy base while growing up. Young children, normally until around ten, need to have a diet that will provide them with a safer base. I'm not say a vegan diet is necesarilly wrong. It just isn't one of the healthiest diets for a child to be put on almost as sonn as their born. They've done proof that the best thing to give an infant is breast milk. If you're an honest vegan you'd have to say no to that idea. People, no matter what they want to say, are animals. Therefore breast milk is an animal based product.
Guess I lied in my first post... I'm just good at rambling.

 

You really haven't read a word i have said have you?

The best way to get calcium is not milk... I really can't be bothered going into it all again... maybe later.

In the mean time read up on nutrition maybe?

Night

p.s. Breast milk is animal based but arguably does not involve animal cruelty or exploitation

 

Hey nobody has mentioned the case of Celab Morehouse in NZ a few years ago.This baby's parents were Seventh Day Adventists.They believed by switching from a vegetarian diet to a strict vegan diet would lead to salvation and better health.
Instead they ended up killing their baby and got five years' jail each.They received little sympathy from the media or the public.For once I agreed with the judiciary.

The problem was that the woman's breast milk contained no B12 as there was none in her diet.The baby developed a skin rash.They did actually take him to hospital.When told the problem and the treatment (a B12 injection) they simply refused to believe it.When no one was looking they quietly removed their baby from hospital and wrapped him in some herbs.They had been completely brainwashed into believing that meat contained absolutely no nutrients what so ever, only toxins.

Case proven forcing veganism on children is child abuse and dangerous.

 

Forcing veganism on children is like forcing them to spend the nite with Michael Jackson. Wankers!

 

The case is not proven that introducing veganism to children is child abuse and dangerous.

The only case you have proved here is that

a. The parents in question had an unbalanced diet

b. The parents refusal to take medical advice caused the death of their child.

Man, the sensationalist rubbish you meat eaters come out with to back your uninformed arguments up with is more amusing than annoying LMFAO

I might add that I am managing to balance my diet to stay entirely healthy with minimum effort.

The ethics of veganism aside, Health comes back down to the issue of a nutritionally balanced diet.

right yeh

 

Yea nature is a bastard.Free range domesticated cattle have it good compared to the likes of wilderbeast.At least the cattle get a guaranteed supply of food and water, are not constantly on the lookout for preditors and running for thier lives.Although cattle are slaughtered at least they get a quick death,not a slow one.

Things are not all that rosey for the preditors.Cheetahs are only successful 20% of the time.Even then their lunch is sometimes snatched away by a lion who cannot be bothered to get his own. Lions die a slow death before being eaten alive by hyenas.

 

All vegans in the developed countries , all other factors being equal inevitably develop B12 deficiency.Some people on a vegan diet become deficient after a few months, some can go as long as twenty years.As it is stored in the liver, there is no need to have a daily dosage or even a monthly dosage.The reason Hindus never got in the Indian subcontinent is that they ate unwashed fruit and vegetables that had the remains of dead insects, their larvae and faeces.

 

Gees we were just having a joke about the wilderbeast

If you want to learn more about the farming industry as a whole... please see the link in my signature "Meet your Meat"

You seem to hold steadfast to your views even in the light of proof to the contrary.

Once again.. please listen this time huh? I will say it simply...

Hey guess what? If you eat enough food with vitamin B12 in it, Yes that's right... you won't be defficient in vitamin B12!

Vitamin B12 comes from a range of sources, not just meat and diary.

A nutritionally balanced diet is the key to good health (gawd I hate having to repeate myself )

 

ok this is my thoughts on the subject.. don't know if its already been cover.. couldn't be bothered to read them all...
but...
i dont think its a problem in a "oh they're gonna get malnutritioned" sense.. but...
i was at a child birthday party for my ex g/f's niece and she had the most amazing pink fairy castle birthday cake.. evry1 had a piece..except 1 little girl who's mum wouldn't let her because she was enforcing a vegan diet on her 3-4 year old kid.. thats just unfair to the child... she sat on the stairs and cried her little eyes out coz she wasn't alowed any birthday cake.... fuck the animals.. they're dead already stopping her child from eating a cake is not gonna bring them back to life.. thats the problem.. be vegan yes be vegan if you want but don't enforce that kind of thing on a child to young to understand..
and thats about all i have to say about that

 

Emotive?.. yes

Any use to this debate?... no

It could be argued that children get meat eating enforced onto them from every angle when they are too young to understand...

If I had been in that position as a child I would look back now and thank my parents for protecting me from a mistake I maybe was too young to understand I was making.

But this thread is actually just about the nutritional aspect.

 

That's not thoughts. That's a pointless piece of emotive bullshit.

All parents 'enforce' their moral values on their children. That's the whole point of being a parent. If you didn't 'enforce' your moral values on your child you'd let them run amok doing whatever the fuck they want. You bring your child up according to the moral belief system that you believe best, then when they're old enough, you allow them to make their own decisions and respect their choices. Children cry all the time when they're stopped from doing what they want to do. The fact that your views differ from those of the parents on this occasion doesn't qualify as a rational argument for not raising your children in that fashion.

 

I have never endorsed factory farming.I call them animal comncentration camps. See http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=864086#post864086

It has been suggested that it is available form a few non animal sources but these are thought to be too unreliable.What you consider to be a nutrionally balenced diet might well be quite different to what I would consider to be a healthy diet.Sadly some people believe that margarine is a health food.Nothing could be further from the truth.It is full of trans fats.It is chemically very similar to some plastics.Whatever is healthy about a veg*n diet is available to the omni anyway.

 

YES! I never said it wasn't hehehe.

My debate here is based around the intitial post which supposed that a vegan diet was unhealthy for children

I think i have more than adequately shown that this is not the case.

B12 is a sticking point, vegans may or may not have to supplement this into their diet.

But again, this comes bck to my initial point about a nutritionally sound diet for everyone whether we are omni's, veggies or vegans bud.

You tend to wander off somewhat don't you? anyway...

My opinion of a nutritionally sound diet is based on information from my doctor / my nutritionlist / the vegan society and *sound* scientific studies (not daily mail type shock ones lol)

 

I feel sorry for vegans like I feel sorry for fat people.Due to my natural sence of goodness ,if I make it to the next Confest I might give out free B12 tablets to vegans to delay the irriversable and inevitable damage to the nervous system of these vegans. There are usually quite a few vegans at a Confest.At one Confest a few years ago I went to a workshop on the "Zen method of attracting your perfect partner". Two hours later I was talking to a vegan who was try to put fear into me, telling me what unhealthy stuff animal foods are.He was going to hold a workshop on why animal experimentation is wrong, but I was the only one who turned up.I agree it is wrong.

 

Keep taking the tablets bud :&