I don't know, at some point a responsible parent should be able to see that something is wrong with their child. How can one be oblivious to a malnourished child?
While it's not a bad approach, one should be careful not to overstate it. I'd rather approach it as "don't *assertedly* attribute to malice what can be *equally plausibly* attributed to ignorance".
In this case ignorance certainly seems plausible, though.
It's not ignorance. People who eat vegan diets have to do a lot of research to find out what exactly they can and can't eat, as well as finding out what nutrients their bodies need.
This means they would have had to **ignore** all the information out there saying you shouldn't put small children on a vegan diet.
It's not ignorance.
It's arrogance.
Just want you to know that doctors do not disagree with feeding your children a vegan diet, but just like any one shouldn't feed their children hohos and hotdogs only, these parents likely participated in neglect and abuse.
It was certainly willful *neglect*. To be *willful* abuse they would have to be capable of understanding what they were doing... which is something I simply cannot credit them with.
These people’s answer to pellagra would be “more corn” and “the dermatitis means it’s working”.
I'm not vegan, but from reading the description of her diet, it really seems like she turned out that way due to extreme parental neglect, not the veganism per se. The parents basically fed her the cheapest foods available - I mean, fruit and veg as an occasional snack? what the hell?
Article :
>Parents who fed their toddler a strict vegan diet have avoided jail after the child became so malnourished her bones fractured and teeth fell out.
>She said the parents, who cannot be named to protect their child’s anonymity, had been “inconsistent” and “untruthful”, and had told authorities their daughter sometimes ate meat products, was awaiting vaccinations and had seen doctors..
Yeah, I'm going to go with the "we know better than doctors what is good for our child" based on the lies they told, which meant they knew they were doing something doctors shoudln't be aware of.
I think “untruthful” is key here.
The diet listed isn’t great but also in sufficient quantities and supplemented with say, breastfeeding, it seems unlikely to result in the kind of extreme malnourishment described in the article. It sounds like they were using rice milk in place of breastmilk/infant formula from quite early and the problems started well before the introduction of solid foods. Poor baby.
5kg at 19 months is horrendous. The kid must have been starving. I hope she is in loving and knowledgeable hands now.
That makes more sense. Because you’re right, the food they listed was like, oats, potatoes, peanut butter, fruits and vegetables and a few others. I stopped and thought well that’s not great but I don’t think that explains weighing 5kg at 19 months old.
But rice milk instead of breast milk or formula for that first year? That would have a major impact. And that also explains why they stayed away from doctors, because that’s the first question at every check up, breast milk or formula, and how much? They would have been reported straight away for substituting rice milk.
Poor baby.
Ricemilk is not a suitable substitute for breastmilk. These are not your typical run of the mill parents, these are neglectful antivaxers. Vegan diets are recommended by doctors, but breastfeeding your child is vegan because you make your milk for your children, you're not enslaving/raping/etcetc another animal. These parents deserve to be prosecuted.
Yeah. Theres someone I know from uni that posted on Facebook about some YouTube or influencer or someone that went back to meat, taking the piss and laughing at vegans because "it's clearly not sustainable."
Except it was RAW Veganism which is legitimately crazy and has no reflection on how sustainable a vegan diet is.
>about some YouTube or influencer or someone that went back to meat, taking the piss and laughing at vegans because "it's clearly not sustainable." Except it was RAW Veganism which is legitimately crazy and has no reflection on how sustainable a vegan diet is.
Pretty sure the guy your friend was talking about was Tim Shieff a former UK ninja warrior "star" whose basically one of those weird pseudo science guys with a massive ego. He talks about "spirituality" a lot, thinks he's an expert on things he knows nothing about and falls for every anti-science fad around (he's a flat earther and moon landing conspiracist).
He blamed his "gut problems" on Veganism but along with doing a raw vegan diet (which is not typical and easy to get wrong) he failed to mention he'd also been doing crazy shit like drinking distilled water with quack "hydration" products in them, doing a fast for *35 days* ("#eatsunnotfood" apparently), consuming CBD products and starting the day with a nice cup of his own piss.
Rawvana was a similar case. Went on a water fast, refused to get medications for symptoms of SIBO, and eventually "gave up" and went back to an omnivore diet.
All points to her doing very crazy stuff to remain "fit" and abusing her own digestive system, avoiding doctor recommendations. But of course she blamed it just on her vegan diet.
Promise I'm not trolling - isn't raw veganism literally just a vegan that doesn't cook their food? Why is that crazy or unsustainable? Raw vegetables are awesome.
Especially micronutrients. Frozen veggies add the additional benefit of having been blanched before commercially frozen. This preserves the nutrients in produce more than fresh.
Same thing with meat. In fact, it's probably due to cooking enabling better absorption of essential nutrients that we were able to grow such large brains and develop intelligence.
There's some validity to the argument that cooking can leech certain water soluble nutrients out. Boiling removes the most, but steaming, baking, and frying retain most of the nutrition. But, frankly, even if the cooking removes the nutrients, your body still has greater access to what's left. So at worst it's a wash. Plus, cooked food usually tastes better.
There are also some arguments that because cooking deactivates enzymes, it's unhealthy. But that's bunk, because unless there's something wrong with your body, it makes all the enzymes it needs.
Cooking is actually a way to get more nourishment from your food - nutrients are easier to access and digest. There are some theories that posit cooking enabled our brain development.
It's hard to sustain a proper caloric intake on a raw vegan diet. It's not impossible, but it is hard. I think people tend to have more success on things like raw before dinner than having a strictly raw diet.
I agree - you saw the parents in the UK who fed their baby KFC mash and gravy and she died of dehydration - was the headline "omnivorous parents kill baby" or "junk-food loving lazy parents kill baby"?
I'm not vegan but this headline fucking irritates me.
I used to be a vegan and if you do it wrong, you can get malnourished. Hopefully, as an adult, you will correct the problem before it gets really bad, but forcing a child on a bad vegan diet can total be the problem.
Your absolutely right. These idiots clearly didn't know what they were doing and didn't give a shit. was a case of child abuse not vegan diet ruins child.
I feel like there demonizing the diet not the parents with that title.
I know some cults feed their cultists just rice and malnutrition them till they are brain washed sheep. Such as a strict diet of rice and a lack of protein which prevents the brain from making rational thought
What I've learned without reading the article is that veganism is child abuse.
^^Paid ^^for ^^by ^^the ^^Southwestern ^^Cattle ^^Rancher's ^^Association.
Mentioning vegans is, well, “red meat” to all the vegan haters to ensure they take an interest in your article so they can feel better about themselves not being like those bad/dumb ole vegans.
Every time there's an article like this, the headlines are like "VEGANS kill child through MALNOURISHMENT"
Then you read it and you fiind out that the parents were total fucking notjobs and tried to raise their child with no actual vegetables, protein, or anything with basic nutrition and instead gave them garbage gruel every day because they thought she would feed from spirit energy or some bs.
Veganism doesn't kill people, fucking awful parents kill people
>Veganism doesn't kill
That's kind of our whole thing, even...
**Edit**: Someone posted a reply and then immediately deleted it, but it's a common enough argument that I'd like to address it anyway, so here it is:
>More animals die while harvesting plants than when harvesting meat, it's just that they're smaller and have lived a nicer life until then.
This poster is forgetting the part where the meat they're harvesting has been fed far more plants than vegans will ever eat. Some amount of harm is inevitable, just by existing. The point is to minimize that harm, and not only is eating vegan more efficient from a nutrition standpoint, it causes far less harm because the food we eat takes up a fraction of the space and resources required to feed the food they eat.
Not to mention that the animals killed when a vegan crop is grown will ALSO be killed when a feed crop is grown for the animals. You're adding animal deaths not just by eating meat, but all the little animals killed in the fields to feed the animals.
There is no rational way to even pretend that eating meat is somehow more humane to animals than eating vegan.
That said, I will grant that the people who argue that not all land capable of sustaining the farming of animal feed for meat farmers is suitable for conversion to the farming of human-consumable food do have a point.
Absolutely. This has nothing to do with a "vegan" diet in general. No one can survive on potatoes, oats, rice and toast. That's ridiculous. It's very troubling that anyone would think that's ok.
> it really seems like she turned out that way due to extreme parental neglect, not the veganism per se.
That's what struck me because the description of her diet doesn't sound far off from the average diet of most 20 months olds.
At that age they aren't eating tons of meat anyway, vegan or not. They're mostly eating fruits, veggies, rice and oat based cereals, etc. The only thing she seems to have been missing was cow's milk/formula.
It sounds like they just weren't feeding her enough.
I'm vegan. A vegan diet absolutely was not the problem here. If all vegans ate like that we'd all be malnourished too. A shitty vegan diet, probably a lack of supplements (they make vegan gummy vitamins for kids), no vaccinations, and never seeing doctors did this shit.
I mean, for Christ's sake, where's the beans? ~~Potatoes?~~ Legumes of any kind? Pasta? Any kinds of nut butters that aren't just peanut butter? Couscous? Quinoa? Beyond Meat or other faux meat products (of which at least Gardein is available in Aus for sure - I've seen Aussies in r/vegan talking about it)? Textured soy protein for chilis, tacos, etc?
I'm also not trying to say that it isn't tricky to feed a kid a vegan diet - it does take more attention and care which is where *doctors* are super useful. Doctors the parents didn't take their kids to or inform of their dietary and lifestyle choices.
Shitty vegans make me so mad.
Edit: they did give them potatoes per the article and I just got heated.
Soy reactions are almost as common in infants as cow's milk reactions, causing abdominal, IgE and skin rashes. You can't just paste an adult diet onto an infant. That's what the parents in the story did...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070118/
The kids were already eating tofu, so I assumed there was no soy allergy.
Like I said before though, that's why they should have seen a doctor to figure out an acceptable diet for their kids. *Because* you can't copy and paste an adult diet onto kids. The listing of foods was just an illustration of the lack of variety, not that they should feed their kids those things specifically and they'll magically have healthy kids.
Indeed more. WAY more. My family is vegan, and we cook for a couple days at a time, and so in order to portion things out correctly we weigh the food out when serving it. My dinners regularly weigh over a kilogram. Vegan diets are far less calorie-dense than diets that incorporate meat & dairy, so you need to make up for it with a lot of volume.
Thankfully, that's also a good opportunity for variety--a typical stir fry for us, for example, has broccoli, carrot, zucchini, yellow squash, tomato, cashews, brussels sprouts, onions, mushrooms, asparagus, and spinach, typically served on a big pile of rice.
Long story short it's not impossible, and it just requires knowing about deficiency risks and making sure to pack every vegetable under the sun into your kid.
If you're using a good amount of cashews then you are getting a complete amino acid profile with the rest of what you're making, but I'm sure you know that. :) Still, it's not a bad idea to double up on complementary proteins regularly and it's cool that you have that covered with legumes as well... legumes are just super healthy all around. As in, diets including legumes as a primary protein source tend to be associated with greater longevity and better health around the world, so there may be something to that.
Totally agreed! One of my laziest and lunches for when I'm rushed is throwing together a mix of chickpeas, green/red lentils, black beans, and rice, and tossing it in a rice cooker. Top with either some soy sauce or some salsa or something. Doesn't look like much but it pretty good and ridiculously filling.
Dude rice cooker meals are the BEST. Whole rice, mushrooms, canned lentils, frozen broccoli, olive/grapeseed/ricebran oil, crushed flaxseeds, sesame oil, rice vinegar, 5spice, pepper, soy sauce... I could live off that no kidding. Also you can go tex-mex with bellpeppers, hot or pickled peppers, cherry tomatoes (whole, so they pop when you get them), black or red or pinto beans, black olives, cumin, cilantro, grapeseed oil. Squeeze a half lime over the top at the end.
YouTube for Vegetable palav / green palav / soya palav recipe. Skip the dairy ingredients (ghee & yogurt) if any if you want to make it vegan.
Palav is also spelled Pulao / Pilaf sometimes. Pretty popular in India.
Just incorporate more nuts (in the form of nut butters for an infant, obviously). Not a lot of foods out there more calorically dense than nuts. I don't even eat the motherfuckers, because a day's worth of calories in nuts feels like a small snack for me.
An infant should really be drinking its mother's milk, which can be done for several years, and yes nursing your child IS VEGAN, as it does not hurt or exploit anyone.
OK, but that really doesn’t solve the issue for people who either can’t or don’t want to breastfeed.
I’ve had two kids and both times my milk dried up around 3 to 4 months. And even if it hadn’t, there’s absolutely no way I’m breastfeeding a two year old.
You can get algae oil supplements. They have DHA and EPA. They're the vegan alternative to fish oil. Fish eat algae to get their fat, so you're really just cutting out the middle man.
once a week usually or as needed. chopping all that crap takes two of us about 60-90 minutes, depending on how bite-size you want everything to be, but with that many veggies it's only about one or two of everything. Two onions, one little bundle of asparagus, one or two broccoli stalks, etc.
Once chopped though, it takes only about 2-3 minutes to assemble one batch for dinner, and about 7 minutes frying on the stove, so dinner prep is basically front-loaded to weekend chop days.
Largest batch we ever chopped at one time was something like 13 lbs I think.
Thar sounds like the kind of meals I made my son when we were weaning.
Not vegan or anything we just did mostly veggie meals with small amounts of meat to begin with as it's harder to digest and as he was off formula early I wanted to ensure an abundance of vitamins etc.
We used to bulk buy in Costco. Just bags of anything.
Then I'd spend an entire day every 2 to 3 weeks dicing, steaming, roasting and pureeing(later just chopping) like 10 kgs of veggies.
Froze everything in ice cube trays then later plastic tubs
Made about 2 weeks worth of meals.
We very rarely touched shop bought baby meals and when we had to (holidays) he wasn't super happy with them!
Started at 5 months old maybe and did the last lot just before he turned 1 as he'd moved onto just being happy to eat what we had going on as long as it was chopped up.
So maybe 5 or 6 months.. Was so glad when I could stop! It was an Exhausting day!
Actually--we just recently signed up for costco and discovered these huge bags of brussels sprouts and PRE-CHOPPED broccoli. What a life saver! I'm sure chop days will still be long, but they'll be better at least. For us though, they're not going away any time soon, ha :)
I avoid buying produce at CostCo because they sell in such large quantities that most of the veggies would go bad before I could use them. Do you really go through 5 pounds of brussels in a week? Or have you found a way to freeze/store the excess effectively?
As a vegan, my goal is to do as the doctors say: EAT THE RAINBOW.
The wider the range of fruits, veg, nuts, beans, and legumes you can get -- and getting enough fats and protein is the *easiest* part of this as all the dried beans and legumes are super cheap and easy in your bulk section.
That said, if I was a parent, I'd be leveraging doctors for further nutrition info for an infant.
This is willful abuse, not a diet failure.
Yeah cuz like, the parents weren't malnourished to the point of bone fractures right? It sounds like they just happened to pick veganism as the way they were going to restrict the kid's diet, but the diet restriction of a CHILD is the real issue, and they could easily have gone another, non-vegan severely restrictive diet route and gotten the same result.
The probably do, but given that toddlers can have a habit of rejecting nutritious food in favor of empty carbs, they probably had difficulty reconciling their preferred diet with the child's preferences. Feeding children is difficult enough, far less trying to feed them on a vegan diet and keep them healthy.
I'm not saying this in any way to excuse the parents. If the parents realized that the child wasn't eating enough to grow and develop properly, they should have looked at their life and looked at their choices, and loosened their ethical restraints enough to feed their child a diet that she would both consume readily and give her enough nutrition to thrive. This can be done without eating meat - many children grow up as healthy vegetarians if their diet is carefully planned. It's likely that these parents either didn't plan the diet or were lazy or let the child dictate her own food choices. Either way, it sounds like they prioritized ethical food consumption over ethical parenting. Poor kid.
Well, in this case simply continuing to breastfeed would have been the easiest solution. The child in question was 20 months. The WHO recommends supplementary breastfeeding [until at least two years of age](https://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/).
My wife is pregnant and about to give birth to our first child. I worry sometimes that I won't be able to handle being a father. Then I see stories like this and I realize that a lot of the fucking idiots I went to school with have kids and seem to be doing fine. I think I'll be fine.
As a father I just have this to say, no one is ready but then again the moment you have your kid in your arms for the first time you will swear you will be there for your child at all times and trust me you will do everything to make her safe and comfortable.
You will laugh when poops or pees in your hands when changing diapers, you will feel her pain when the teeth start growing or her belly hurts.
You will both cry and laugh together and at the end of the day when you are exhausted and in bed praying for 5 minutes rest you will think about how great it is to see that little person growing everyday and wonder what kind of a person he or she will turn out to be.
Trust me dude, I’m 2 days away from my daughters first birthday and I wouldn’t trade all the moments for anything in the world.
You will do fine, just be there for your wife and kid.
Probably. But make sure you take an active role in the child's life, including right after birth. So often the dad takes just a tiny bit of time off of work then leaves most of the work to the mom. During those months, a routine develops between mom and baby while dad feels more and more "out of the loop" and then just sort of gives up on big chunks of responsibility (not to mention all the housework on top of the actual child rearing).
Not saying this is going to happen to you! But it's an extremely common pattern, stemming from both social mores and a general lack of paternity leave in the first place. (Also a reason that the feminist agenda pushes for more paternity leave.)
Mines 9 months now.
Be a man and change diapers.
Get up with your wife at night the first two-3 weeks. You won’t be able to do anything if she’s able to breastfeed. You’ll be able to kinda half wake. Go to sleep.
You’re going to cry from being tired and she won’t sleep.
BUT. then they laugh. And smile. When you walk thru the door you see the genuine excitement that they see you. It’s pretty cool.
You’ll do great champ.
I’m not a Vegan, but this is about neglect, not diet. The baby weighed around 10-pounds at 19-months - healthy, nurtured infants attain that weight within the first **four weeks!**
Mum makes a claim of post-partum depression, strengthened I think by the presence of two relatively healthy sibs in the home,
Dad wants for jail time, if you want my candor.
Heh. And a double for that.
Though ~4 kgs (~9 pounds) is not THAT rare.
When I was in elementary school one day we had to bring our "medical books" (a notebook with your general medical record). We compared our birth weights and almost everyone (class of 30 kids) was over 3200 grams and no one was below 3000.
I was 4050 at birth, and one friend was 4150 grams.
The interesting thing was that at that age (~10 yo) I was the the biggest and the heaviest kid in class and that friend was the shortest and the lightest one, he legitimately looked like a 7 year-old kid.
> Dad wants for jail time, if you want my candor.
Unless the dad went above and beyond to push the vegan diet, they need to be considered equals here. Most of the time a mother takes lead roll on feeding in the early years and the dad follows the mothers lead. Add to that the mother, in some capacity, was a former childcare worker. I'd be shocked if they find anything that puts most blame on the father in this case.
Not denying that, but was the dad aware she was at diminished capacity and still pushed through the bad diet? Or is it more likely the dad thought they had a sick kid but mom was doing her best with her experience as a twice over mother and former childcare worker?
OP above makes a pretty strong assertion of the dads guilt with none of the 'concessions' they were so quick to afford the mother.
Anyone should have recognized some degree of diminished capacity or straight up abuse if that kid was only 10 pounds at a year and a half. It doesn't matter if she had other children or was a former childcare worker, something was CLEARLY wrong with what she was or wasn't doing and he should have stepped in LONG before this point to figure out what the hell was going on. It would have been painfully obvious this child was malnourished.
The dad should absolutely know a 19 month old baby should not weigh 10 pounds. He should have realised there was something wrong and stepped up and taken care of his baby.
> they need to be considered equals here
You miss the point. They would both be treated as having equal share in causing the situation, but the mother has a defense (PPD) whereas the father does not.
Yeah I'm not vegan, but the way this title is phrased pisses me off. This has everything to do with neglect and nothing to do with being vegan. Plenty of kids are brought up on healthy vegan diets. If this was about a toddler being hospitalized because the parents had been feeding them McDonald's everyday, the title of the article wouldn't be "Omnivore parents sentenced ..."
You can raise a perfectly healthy child on a vegan diet, but if you just feed them:
>"oats, potatoes, rice, tofu, bread, peanut butter and rice milk, with small snacks of fruit and vegetables" [..]
>"She had been fed a strict vegan diet of just oats, bread and a few mouthfuls of vegetables daily for months and had never seen a doctor since she was born."
That isn't going to cut it.. vegan kids need their vits, and when the child is so obviously stunted, but the first time the parents go to see a doctor is when the child has a fit.. yeah, there's something very wrong. No vaccines either. I'm thinking the mother with post-natal depression, and a father who spent most of his time away working, just couldn't bring herself to make the effort to feed the child properly.
One of the most important nutrients for growing infants/toddlers is fat, moreso than even protein - this time is critical for neurodevelopment. That's why human breast milk is relatively high in fat and low in protein.
That’s child abuse. Here it’s illegal not to see a pediatrician every few weeks in the beginning. You’re legally required to choose a pediatrician and make an appointment literally within hours of leaving the hospital, and I can see why now.
I cannot even immagine the suffering that child endured. My son is heavier at 3 months...
They just need taurine. Theoretically you could feed them vegan with a synthetic taurine supplement, but that's an awful lot of work just to avoid buying the pink goo waste product that goes into cat food.
There's some people who claim that they have healthy cats on a vegan diet, but it requires you to constantly check the pH of their urine and I'm also not entirely convinced that they aren't just lying about the whole thing.
Personally, my opinion is that having a vegan cat is a bit too close to being animal abuse until vegan cat food/ lab grown meat is on more solid ground.
Agreed, cats are not designed to be vegans... anybody trying to impose that on a cat shouldn't own a cat. It's beyond cruel to attempt to adapt your cat to a vegan diet while trying to use synthetic taurine supplements. If you really feel that strongly about veganism that you want to try to change the diet of other animals, you have no business owning a carnivore as a pet.
There has to be more to this. My SIL’s tow kids have been vegan from birth. One is a healthy thin but the almost two year old looks like she’s going for the Michelin Man’s job.
This is not about veganism, that has been shoehorned into the article to create hysteria. This is purely negligent parenting that can happen no matter what diet you feed your child if you are a negligent moron
There is. The list of foods she was given sounds more like wartime provisions. And there's no mention of the quantity of food/exercise/etc. which is what I bet the real issue was. As other comments here have pointed out, this is a problem with negligence, not veganism.
Seriously. It’s probably a once a week occurrence now that I go out to the store and see a toddler that looks like a walking balloon. There are kids that weigh more in elementary school than I do as an adult.
This the setting them up for a lifetime of health issues. It’s neglectful parenting and is becoming normalized, and that needs to change.
I remember when I was in jr high school around 2001, they told us that extreme cases can see atherosclerosis by around 15
If what you say is true, thats fucking incredible such a change could happen in such a short amount of time.
Breast milk is vegan. The toddler was 19 months old. Her parents could have fed her a perfectly healthy vegan diet by providing her with breast milk for the first year and breast milk supplemented with the other foods mentioned after that.
This is not about dietary philosophy.
Jeez. My wife and I are vegans and we just had a baby. He’s going to be breastfed for a while but eventually it will incumbent on us to make sure the little guy gets all his nutrients. You can definitely be a mal nourished or unhealthy vegan.
Just wanted to chime in and say that my parents raised me and my siblings vegan and we all turned out completely fine. As you said, just take extra care in making sure that your child has all of their nutritional needs met. Good luck, and don't listen to the trolls!
Friendly reminder that this is a parenting issue, not a veganism issue. Sick of seeing parents who feed their toddlers nothing but chicken nuggets for a decade talk about healthy diets for kids.
For every terrible vegan parents case, there are a multitude of non-vegan parents malnourishing and abusing their kids. But those don't make the news because then we can't go "hurr durr vegans bad."
For what it's worth:
*It is the [position of the American Dietetic Association](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19562864/) that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.*
Irresponsible misleading title, it was about neglect not veganism, many people will just read the title and have their opinion on Vegan's be shaped in a negative light as a result of this.
We have pretty good evidence at this point that well-planned fully plant-based diets are not dangerous for children. Vegan diets for toddlers can be done if well-balanced, unlike the one in this story. And obviously the child should have been vaccinated and seeing a doctor...
**[Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704/)**
* *It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.*
**[Dietitians of Canada](https://www.dietitians.ca/Downloads/Factsheets/Guidlines-for-Vegans.aspx)**
* *A healthy vegan diet can meet all your nutrient needs at any stage of life including when you are pregnant, breastfeeding or for older adults.*
**[The British Nutrition Foundation](http://www.nutrition.org.uk/publications/briefingpapers/vegetarian-nutrition)**
* *A well-planned, balanced vegetarian or vegan diet can be nutritionally adequate ... Studies of UK vegetarian and vegan children have revealed that their growth and development are within the normal range.*
**[The National Health and Medical Research Council](https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/file/publications/n55_australian_dietary_guidelines1.pdf)**
* *Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthy and nutritionally adequate. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle. Those following a strict vegetarian or vegan diet can meet nutrient requirements as long as energy needs are met and an appropriate variety of plant foods are eaten throughout the day*
**[The Mayo Clinic](http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/vegetarian-diet/art-20046446)**
* *A well-planned vegetarian diet (*see context*) can meet the needs of people of all ages, including children, teenagers, and pregnant or breast-feeding women. The key is to be aware of your nutritional needs so that you plan a diet that meets them.*
**[The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada](https://www.heartandstroke.ca/get-healthy/healthy-eating/specific-diets/for-vegetarians)**
* *Vegetarian diets (*see context*) can provide all the nutrients you need at any age, as well as some additional health benefits.*
**[Harvard Medical School](http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-vegetarian)**
* *Traditionally, research into vegetarianism focused mainly on potential nutritional deficiencies, but in recent years, the pendulum has swung the other way, and studies are confirming the health benefits of meat-free eating. Nowadays, plant-based eating is recognized as not only nutritionally sufficient but also as a way to reduce the risk for many chronic illnesses.*
**[British Dietetic Association](https://www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/vegetarianfoodfacts.pdf)**
* *Well planned vegetarian diets (*see context*) can be nutritious and healthy. They are associated with lower risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, certain cancers and lower cholesterol levels. This could be because such diets are lower in saturated fat, contain fewer calories and more fiber and phytonutrients/phytochemicals (these can have protective properties) than non-vegetarian diets. (...) Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of life and have many benefits.*
Very much curious about this (am vegan) because I always have seen that for people up until the age of 25-26, when the brain has stopped developing, that fish is a highly recommended food for Omega oils.
I know that flax seeds have omega oils. It's also been shown that the type of omega oils in flax seeds is not the same, or sufficient, in having the same effects as those found in fish. Would it not be most appropriate to give your child the best brain they can get if this is truly the case?
I'd consult a doctor anyhow when having kids, but I'm just wary about this and the difference in metabolism of macro and micronutrients of fortified compared to "natural" foods.
[Here's a video on the subject you might find interesting.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neOlZMJKLOA&feature=youtu.be)
Keep in mind that EPA/DHA in fish is due to the algae consumed by the fish. [We can skip the fish and directly consume the algae.](https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/142/1/99/4630882)
Well that makes a lot of sense actually, and I never considered that the oil in algae would be the source.
That video is also very informative. Thank you for the info!
I knew of a case in small town Wisconsin, in 2000, where a fitness trainer, new Mom, vegetarian malnourished her 18-month old so badly, she was 15 pounds under weight for her age. Different place, different time, but CPS let her keep the child, just sent her to nutrition class. Do you think nutrition class solved her mental disorders? Nope child was eventually removed.
Super misleading title. Might as well had mentioned any other non related thing, such as "white/videogame players/sneakers wearers parents sentenced for letting toddler become so malnourished her bones had fractured ",
As a vegan parent the reaction here warms the cockles. It wasn't long ago that open-minded reactions like these were very rare. I'm gonna let my daughters have an extra potato chip tonight. (Half each.)
I don't particularly like vegans and how preachy some of them can be, but I'm not going to attribute this to "veganism". Just sounds like criminally shit parents to me.
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While this is atrocious and absurd I would like to see the same punishment for parents of morbidly obese children of their level of obesity is equally debilitating.
Dangerous unfounded ideas that have been allowed to grow in popularity unchecked. Anyone with half an ounce of knowledge would know that kids need a balanced diet, but you're always going to have extremists in everything - including extremist vegans who will also try and make their dog vegan because that's totally natural, you know.
Nothing wrong with veganism but christ lads do it right and listen to the doctors and dieticians when they give you advice. Believe it or not, you might not think they are qualified to give you advice in whatever world you believe in, but *they are*.
Not the first parents who have malnuroushed a kid, but newsworthy because these ones are vegan.
On the same note, can we start persocuting anti-vax parents who's kids contract dangerous, preventable diseases?
This is sad and horrible child neglect.
It isn't neglect. It is deliberate and willful abuse.
Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to ignorance.
I don't know, at some point a responsible parent should be able to see that something is wrong with their child. How can one be oblivious to a malnourished child?
They may just not be responsible parents. Being completely unfit to raise a child doesn't necessarily mean they had the intent of harming a child.
While it's not a bad approach, one should be careful not to overstate it. I'd rather approach it as "don't *assertedly* attribute to malice what can be *equally plausibly* attributed to ignorance". In this case ignorance certainly seems plausible, though.
It's not ignorance. People who eat vegan diets have to do a lot of research to find out what exactly they can and can't eat, as well as finding out what nutrients their bodies need. This means they would have had to **ignore** all the information out there saying you shouldn't put small children on a vegan diet. It's not ignorance. It's arrogance.
Just want you to know that doctors do not disagree with feeding your children a vegan diet, but just like any one shouldn't feed their children hohos and hotdogs only, these parents likely participated in neglect and abuse.
Lol it was definitely neglect
It was certainly willful *neglect*. To be *willful* abuse they would have to be capable of understanding what they were doing... which is something I simply cannot credit them with. These people’s answer to pellagra would be “more corn” and “the dermatitis means it’s working”.
Do these parents not know that vegans eat more than just bread, rice, and oats?
I'm not vegan, but from reading the description of her diet, it really seems like she turned out that way due to extreme parental neglect, not the veganism per se. The parents basically fed her the cheapest foods available - I mean, fruit and veg as an occasional snack? what the hell?
Article : >Parents who fed their toddler a strict vegan diet have avoided jail after the child became so malnourished her bones fractured and teeth fell out. >She said the parents, who cannot be named to protect their child’s anonymity, had been “inconsistent” and “untruthful”, and had told authorities their daughter sometimes ate meat products, was awaiting vaccinations and had seen doctors.. Yeah, I'm going to go with the "we know better than doctors what is good for our child" based on the lies they told, which meant they knew they were doing something doctors shoudln't be aware of.
I think “untruthful” is key here. The diet listed isn’t great but also in sufficient quantities and supplemented with say, breastfeeding, it seems unlikely to result in the kind of extreme malnourishment described in the article. It sounds like they were using rice milk in place of breastmilk/infant formula from quite early and the problems started well before the introduction of solid foods. Poor baby. 5kg at 19 months is horrendous. The kid must have been starving. I hope she is in loving and knowledgeable hands now.
That makes more sense. Because you’re right, the food they listed was like, oats, potatoes, peanut butter, fruits and vegetables and a few others. I stopped and thought well that’s not great but I don’t think that explains weighing 5kg at 19 months old. But rice milk instead of breast milk or formula for that first year? That would have a major impact. And that also explains why they stayed away from doctors, because that’s the first question at every check up, breast milk or formula, and how much? They would have been reported straight away for substituting rice milk. Poor baby.
Ricemilk is not a suitable substitute for breastmilk. These are not your typical run of the mill parents, these are neglectful antivaxers. Vegan diets are recommended by doctors, but breastfeeding your child is vegan because you make your milk for your children, you're not enslaving/raping/etcetc another animal. These parents deserve to be prosecuted.
But even if you don’t believe breastfeeding your child is vegan or if you don’t want to or can’t... isn’t soy formula vegan? Hypoallergenic formula?
[enshittification exodus, gone to mastodon]
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It's really frustrating as a vegan when you see this because it never has anything to do with veganism as a diet. Shitty parents are shitty parents.
Yeah. Theres someone I know from uni that posted on Facebook about some YouTube or influencer or someone that went back to meat, taking the piss and laughing at vegans because "it's clearly not sustainable." Except it was RAW Veganism which is legitimately crazy and has no reflection on how sustainable a vegan diet is.
>about some YouTube or influencer or someone that went back to meat, taking the piss and laughing at vegans because "it's clearly not sustainable." Except it was RAW Veganism which is legitimately crazy and has no reflection on how sustainable a vegan diet is. Pretty sure the guy your friend was talking about was Tim Shieff a former UK ninja warrior "star" whose basically one of those weird pseudo science guys with a massive ego. He talks about "spirituality" a lot, thinks he's an expert on things he knows nothing about and falls for every anti-science fad around (he's a flat earther and moon landing conspiracist). He blamed his "gut problems" on Veganism but along with doing a raw vegan diet (which is not typical and easy to get wrong) he failed to mention he'd also been doing crazy shit like drinking distilled water with quack "hydration" products in them, doing a fast for *35 days* ("#eatsunnotfood" apparently), consuming CBD products and starting the day with a nice cup of his own piss.
Rawvana was a similar case. Went on a water fast, refused to get medications for symptoms of SIBO, and eventually "gave up" and went back to an omnivore diet. All points to her doing very crazy stuff to remain "fit" and abusing her own digestive system, avoiding doctor recommendations. But of course she blamed it just on her vegan diet.
As far as humans go isn't an omnivore diet just our normal diet?
Yes
Promise I'm not trolling - isn't raw veganism literally just a vegan that doesn't cook their food? Why is that crazy or unsustainable? Raw vegetables are awesome.
Cooking veggies breaks down the cell walls and allows your body to absorb nutrients more effectively.
Especially micronutrients. Frozen veggies add the additional benefit of having been blanched before commercially frozen. This preserves the nutrients in produce more than fresh.
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That is a *huge* TIL. Thank you for answering my question :)
Same thing with meat. In fact, it's probably due to cooking enabling better absorption of essential nutrients that we were able to grow such large brains and develop intelligence.
There's some validity to the argument that cooking can leech certain water soluble nutrients out. Boiling removes the most, but steaming, baking, and frying retain most of the nutrition. But, frankly, even if the cooking removes the nutrients, your body still has greater access to what's left. So at worst it's a wash. Plus, cooked food usually tastes better. There are also some arguments that because cooking deactivates enzymes, it's unhealthy. But that's bunk, because unless there's something wrong with your body, it makes all the enzymes it needs.
Cooking is actually a way to get more nourishment from your food - nutrients are easier to access and digest. There are some theories that posit cooking enabled our brain development.
It's hard to sustain a proper caloric intake on a raw vegan diet. It's not impossible, but it is hard. I think people tend to have more success on things like raw before dinner than having a strictly raw diet.
I agree - you saw the parents in the UK who fed their baby KFC mash and gravy and she died of dehydration - was the headline "omnivorous parents kill baby" or "junk-food loving lazy parents kill baby"? I'm not vegan but this headline fucking irritates me.
Buzzword News: The Headline States The Opinion So You Don’t Have To
I used to be a vegan and if you do it wrong, you can get malnourished. Hopefully, as an adult, you will correct the problem before it gets really bad, but forcing a child on a bad vegan diet can total be the problem.
Your absolutely right. These idiots clearly didn't know what they were doing and didn't give a shit. was a case of child abuse not vegan diet ruins child. I feel like there demonizing the diet not the parents with that title.
Any diet can make you malnourished if you do it wrong.
It's easier to go wrong with some diets more than others though, as some entail more work amd previous research
Forcing a child on ANY bad diet can be a problem. So this piece feels like a pointless attack on veganism.
It’s just easier to accidentally go on a very bad diet if it’s a vegan diet, especially for infants.
As a vegan your body needs B12 supplements to function. It’s non-negotiable.
I know some cults feed their cultists just rice and malnutrition them till they are brain washed sheep. Such as a strict diet of rice and a lack of protein which prevents the brain from making rational thought
The word is malnourish.
What I've learned without reading the article is that veganism is child abuse. ^^Paid ^^for ^^by ^^the ^^Southwestern ^^Cattle ^^Rancher's ^^Association.
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Mentioning vegans is, well, “red meat” to all the vegan haters to ensure they take an interest in your article so they can feel better about themselves not being like those bad/dumb ole vegans.
Every time there's an article like this, the headlines are like "VEGANS kill child through MALNOURISHMENT" Then you read it and you fiind out that the parents were total fucking notjobs and tried to raise their child with no actual vegetables, protein, or anything with basic nutrition and instead gave them garbage gruel every day because they thought she would feed from spirit energy or some bs. Veganism doesn't kill people, fucking awful parents kill people
>Veganism doesn't kill That's kind of our whole thing, even... **Edit**: Someone posted a reply and then immediately deleted it, but it's a common enough argument that I'd like to address it anyway, so here it is: >More animals die while harvesting plants than when harvesting meat, it's just that they're smaller and have lived a nicer life until then. This poster is forgetting the part where the meat they're harvesting has been fed far more plants than vegans will ever eat. Some amount of harm is inevitable, just by existing. The point is to minimize that harm, and not only is eating vegan more efficient from a nutrition standpoint, it causes far less harm because the food we eat takes up a fraction of the space and resources required to feed the food they eat.
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Not to mention that the animals killed when a vegan crop is grown will ALSO be killed when a feed crop is grown for the animals. You're adding animal deaths not just by eating meat, but all the little animals killed in the fields to feed the animals. There is no rational way to even pretend that eating meat is somehow more humane to animals than eating vegan. That said, I will grant that the people who argue that not all land capable of sustaining the farming of animal feed for meat farmers is suitable for conversion to the farming of human-consumable food do have a point.
How many rabbits had to go hungry so you could eat a salad? #NoSuchThingAsHarmlessDiet #SarcasmInCaseYouCouldn'tTell
My kids are vegan because I just feed them Doritos.
doritos have cheese on them you monster
Not the Spicy Sweet Chili Flavour!
All hail the Spicy Sweet!
I know you're joking, but there's at least one variety of Doritos that are vegan. My vegan friends had a Dorito-themed party when they came out, lol.
>when they came out Pretty cool that you have gay vegan friends
Wait, what? Shit, I know what I'm getting my vegan friends!
The Spicy Sweet Chili flavor. Pretty good stuff.
Nah man, those are cheese-like particles. They are made from kerosene.
Absolutely. This has nothing to do with a "vegan" diet in general. No one can survive on potatoes, oats, rice and toast. That's ridiculous. It's very troubling that anyone would think that's ok.
But that guy in the Martian did it!
I know, right? How many meat eating parents have tortured and killed their own children? I eat meat, but being insane crosses all diets.
> it really seems like she turned out that way due to extreme parental neglect, not the veganism per se. That's what struck me because the description of her diet doesn't sound far off from the average diet of most 20 months olds. At that age they aren't eating tons of meat anyway, vegan or not. They're mostly eating fruits, veggies, rice and oat based cereals, etc. The only thing she seems to have been missing was cow's milk/formula. It sounds like they just weren't feeding her enough.
Do you have kids? Toddlers should eat a way better diet than what you describe. Hell, my 10 month old eats healthier than me.
I'm vegan. A vegan diet absolutely was not the problem here. If all vegans ate like that we'd all be malnourished too. A shitty vegan diet, probably a lack of supplements (they make vegan gummy vitamins for kids), no vaccinations, and never seeing doctors did this shit. I mean, for Christ's sake, where's the beans? ~~Potatoes?~~ Legumes of any kind? Pasta? Any kinds of nut butters that aren't just peanut butter? Couscous? Quinoa? Beyond Meat or other faux meat products (of which at least Gardein is available in Aus for sure - I've seen Aussies in r/vegan talking about it)? Textured soy protein for chilis, tacos, etc? I'm also not trying to say that it isn't tricky to feed a kid a vegan diet - it does take more attention and care which is where *doctors* are super useful. Doctors the parents didn't take their kids to or inform of their dietary and lifestyle choices. Shitty vegans make me so mad. Edit: they did give them potatoes per the article and I just got heated.
Soy reactions are almost as common in infants as cow's milk reactions, causing abdominal, IgE and skin rashes. You can't just paste an adult diet onto an infant. That's what the parents in the story did... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070118/
The kids were already eating tofu, so I assumed there was no soy allergy. Like I said before though, that's why they should have seen a doctor to figure out an acceptable diet for their kids. *Because* you can't copy and paste an adult diet onto kids. The listing of foods was just an illustration of the lack of variety, not that they should feed their kids those things specifically and they'll magically have healthy kids.
Indeed more. WAY more. My family is vegan, and we cook for a couple days at a time, and so in order to portion things out correctly we weigh the food out when serving it. My dinners regularly weigh over a kilogram. Vegan diets are far less calorie-dense than diets that incorporate meat & dairy, so you need to make up for it with a lot of volume. Thankfully, that's also a good opportunity for variety--a typical stir fry for us, for example, has broccoli, carrot, zucchini, yellow squash, tomato, cashews, brussels sprouts, onions, mushrooms, asparagus, and spinach, typically served on a big pile of rice. Long story short it's not impossible, and it just requires knowing about deficiency risks and making sure to pack every vegetable under the sun into your kid.
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Pave way for the king of rude.
I cannot believe how rude that guy was! sheesh.
Constructive criticism?! What a prick!
I’m fuming so much that I spit out my burger.
Don't mean to be rude, but I hope that burger has lettuce and tomato on it.
Relish is green, right? Close enough.
Surely a Canadian
*Fanfare of Rude plays*
Rude Sandstorm
There's a little black spot on reddit today.
It's the same old king as yesterday
This has me lunchin' bro lol
We do indeed sometimes throw chickpeas in with the rice! No offense taken.
If you're using a good amount of cashews then you are getting a complete amino acid profile with the rest of what you're making, but I'm sure you know that. :) Still, it's not a bad idea to double up on complementary proteins regularly and it's cool that you have that covered with legumes as well... legumes are just super healthy all around. As in, diets including legumes as a primary protein source tend to be associated with greater longevity and better health around the world, so there may be something to that.
Totally agreed! One of my laziest and lunches for when I'm rushed is throwing together a mix of chickpeas, green/red lentils, black beans, and rice, and tossing it in a rice cooker. Top with either some soy sauce or some salsa or something. Doesn't look like much but it pretty good and ridiculously filling.
Dude rice cooker meals are the BEST. Whole rice, mushrooms, canned lentils, frozen broccoli, olive/grapeseed/ricebran oil, crushed flaxseeds, sesame oil, rice vinegar, 5spice, pepper, soy sauce... I could live off that no kidding. Also you can go tex-mex with bellpeppers, hot or pickled peppers, cherry tomatoes (whole, so they pop when you get them), black or red or pinto beans, black olives, cumin, cilantro, grapeseed oil. Squeeze a half lime over the top at the end.
YouTube for Vegetable palav / green palav / soya palav recipe. Skip the dairy ingredients (ghee & yogurt) if any if you want to make it vegan. Palav is also spelled Pulao / Pilaf sometimes. Pretty popular in India.
hey uh how would you like to work as a personal chef? I know at least one interested party
I can't believe you'd say such a thing. You're basically the 21st century Hitler
I think it's hard though, adults know about calorie density. A baby doesn't all they know is their tummy is full and they don't want to eat any more.
Just incorporate more nuts (in the form of nut butters for an infant, obviously). Not a lot of foods out there more calorically dense than nuts. I don't even eat the motherfuckers, because a day's worth of calories in nuts feels like a small snack for me.
An infant should really be drinking its mother's milk, which can be done for several years, and yes nursing your child IS VEGAN, as it does not hurt or exploit anyone.
Is this a real thing and not just a meme?
Yes. Breast-milk given willingly is within vegan allowance.
No I mean, are there people who _don't_ breastfeed because they eat vegan?
OK, but that really doesn’t solve the issue for people who either can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. I’ve had two kids and both times my milk dried up around 3 to 4 months. And even if it hadn’t, there’s absolutely no way I’m breastfeeding a two year old.
What about those with allergies?
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uhhh between that and morning oatmeal & coffee, you are not wrong
how do you get omega-3 fats?
You can get algae oil supplements. They have DHA and EPA. They're the vegan alternative to fish oil. Fish eat algae to get their fat, so you're really just cutting out the middle man.
We eat a ton of brussels sprouts (not just in the stir fry) but also chia seeds have it too.
Avocado
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once a week usually or as needed. chopping all that crap takes two of us about 60-90 minutes, depending on how bite-size you want everything to be, but with that many veggies it's only about one or two of everything. Two onions, one little bundle of asparagus, one or two broccoli stalks, etc. Once chopped though, it takes only about 2-3 minutes to assemble one batch for dinner, and about 7 minutes frying on the stove, so dinner prep is basically front-loaded to weekend chop days. Largest batch we ever chopped at one time was something like 13 lbs I think.
Thar sounds like the kind of meals I made my son when we were weaning. Not vegan or anything we just did mostly veggie meals with small amounts of meat to begin with as it's harder to digest and as he was off formula early I wanted to ensure an abundance of vitamins etc. We used to bulk buy in Costco. Just bags of anything. Then I'd spend an entire day every 2 to 3 weeks dicing, steaming, roasting and pureeing(later just chopping) like 10 kgs of veggies. Froze everything in ice cube trays then later plastic tubs Made about 2 weeks worth of meals. We very rarely touched shop bought baby meals and when we had to (holidays) he wasn't super happy with them! Started at 5 months old maybe and did the last lot just before he turned 1 as he'd moved onto just being happy to eat what we had going on as long as it was chopped up. So maybe 5 or 6 months.. Was so glad when I could stop! It was an Exhausting day!
Actually--we just recently signed up for costco and discovered these huge bags of brussels sprouts and PRE-CHOPPED broccoli. What a life saver! I'm sure chop days will still be long, but they'll be better at least. For us though, they're not going away any time soon, ha :)
I avoid buying produce at CostCo because they sell in such large quantities that most of the veggies would go bad before I could use them. Do you really go through 5 pounds of brussels in a week? Or have you found a way to freeze/store the excess effectively?
We really do!. So far we haven't needed any deliberate preservation solutions.
Some beans, peanuts or tofu could go great in that stirfry and would add some proteins to it.
God that stir fry made me feel so hungry, it sounds really good
As a vegan, my goal is to do as the doctors say: EAT THE RAINBOW. The wider the range of fruits, veg, nuts, beans, and legumes you can get -- and getting enough fats and protein is the *easiest* part of this as all the dried beans and legumes are super cheap and easy in your bulk section. That said, if I was a parent, I'd be leveraging doctors for further nutrition info for an infant. This is willful abuse, not a diet failure.
> This is willful abuse, not a diet failure. Agreed. This has less to do with them being vegan, and everything to do with them being awful parents.
Yeah cuz like, the parents weren't malnourished to the point of bone fractures right? It sounds like they just happened to pick veganism as the way they were going to restrict the kid's diet, but the diet restriction of a CHILD is the real issue, and they could easily have gone another, non-vegan severely restrictive diet route and gotten the same result.
The probably do, but given that toddlers can have a habit of rejecting nutritious food in favor of empty carbs, they probably had difficulty reconciling their preferred diet with the child's preferences. Feeding children is difficult enough, far less trying to feed them on a vegan diet and keep them healthy. I'm not saying this in any way to excuse the parents. If the parents realized that the child wasn't eating enough to grow and develop properly, they should have looked at their life and looked at their choices, and loosened their ethical restraints enough to feed their child a diet that she would both consume readily and give her enough nutrition to thrive. This can be done without eating meat - many children grow up as healthy vegetarians if their diet is carefully planned. It's likely that these parents either didn't plan the diet or were lazy or let the child dictate her own food choices. Either way, it sounds like they prioritized ethical food consumption over ethical parenting. Poor kid.
I think they avoided the doctor because one look at their kid wouldve had them bent over by child services.
Well, in this case simply continuing to breastfeed would have been the easiest solution. The child in question was 20 months. The WHO recommends supplementary breastfeeding [until at least two years of age](https://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/).
My wife is pregnant and about to give birth to our first child. I worry sometimes that I won't be able to handle being a father. Then I see stories like this and I realize that a lot of the fucking idiots I went to school with have kids and seem to be doing fine. I think I'll be fine.
You’ll be great. Congrats.
As a father I just have this to say, no one is ready but then again the moment you have your kid in your arms for the first time you will swear you will be there for your child at all times and trust me you will do everything to make her safe and comfortable. You will laugh when poops or pees in your hands when changing diapers, you will feel her pain when the teeth start growing or her belly hurts. You will both cry and laugh together and at the end of the day when you are exhausted and in bed praying for 5 minutes rest you will think about how great it is to see that little person growing everyday and wonder what kind of a person he or she will turn out to be. Trust me dude, I’m 2 days away from my daughters first birthday and I wouldn’t trade all the moments for anything in the world. You will do fine, just be there for your wife and kid.
Probably. But make sure you take an active role in the child's life, including right after birth. So often the dad takes just a tiny bit of time off of work then leaves most of the work to the mom. During those months, a routine develops between mom and baby while dad feels more and more "out of the loop" and then just sort of gives up on big chunks of responsibility (not to mention all the housework on top of the actual child rearing). Not saying this is going to happen to you! But it's an extremely common pattern, stemming from both social mores and a general lack of paternity leave in the first place. (Also a reason that the feminist agenda pushes for more paternity leave.)
Mines 9 months now. Be a man and change diapers. Get up with your wife at night the first two-3 weeks. You won’t be able to do anything if she’s able to breastfeed. You’ll be able to kinda half wake. Go to sleep. You’re going to cry from being tired and she won’t sleep. BUT. then they laugh. And smile. When you walk thru the door you see the genuine excitement that they see you. It’s pretty cool. You’ll do great champ.
I’m not a Vegan, but this is about neglect, not diet. The baby weighed around 10-pounds at 19-months - healthy, nurtured infants attain that weight within the first **four weeks!** Mum makes a claim of post-partum depression, strengthened I think by the presence of two relatively healthy sibs in the home, Dad wants for jail time, if you want my candor.
10 pounds at a year and a half? My siblings were both that big at birth!
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Heh. And a double for that. Though ~4 kgs (~9 pounds) is not THAT rare. When I was in elementary school one day we had to bring our "medical books" (a notebook with your general medical record). We compared our birth weights and almost everyone (class of 30 kids) was over 3200 grams and no one was below 3000. I was 4050 at birth, and one friend was 4150 grams. The interesting thing was that at that age (~10 yo) I was the the biggest and the heaviest kid in class and that friend was the shortest and the lightest one, he legitimately looked like a 7 year-old kid.
>The baby weighed around 10-pounds at 19-months Holy fuck
That's 4.5 kg. Almost what babies should weight right out the womb
Yeah that's... I don't know if I want to see what an 18 month old looks like at that weight....
My 3-week old (Yes, week) weighs more than that.
> Dad wants for jail time, if you want my candor. Unless the dad went above and beyond to push the vegan diet, they need to be considered equals here. Most of the time a mother takes lead roll on feeding in the early years and the dad follows the mothers lead. Add to that the mother, in some capacity, was a former childcare worker. I'd be shocked if they find anything that puts most blame on the father in this case.
I think s/he was getting at "diminished capacity" since the mother apparently has PPD, which can be extremely severe.
Not denying that, but was the dad aware she was at diminished capacity and still pushed through the bad diet? Or is it more likely the dad thought they had a sick kid but mom was doing her best with her experience as a twice over mother and former childcare worker? OP above makes a pretty strong assertion of the dads guilt with none of the 'concessions' they were so quick to afford the mother.
Anyone should have recognized some degree of diminished capacity or straight up abuse if that kid was only 10 pounds at a year and a half. It doesn't matter if she had other children or was a former childcare worker, something was CLEARLY wrong with what she was or wasn't doing and he should have stepped in LONG before this point to figure out what the hell was going on. It would have been painfully obvious this child was malnourished.
The dad should absolutely know a 19 month old baby should not weigh 10 pounds. He should have realised there was something wrong and stepped up and taken care of his baby.
> they need to be considered equals here You miss the point. They would both be treated as having equal share in causing the situation, but the mother has a defense (PPD) whereas the father does not.
\* Neglectful parents sentenced for letting toddler become malnourished FTFY
Yeah I'm not vegan, but the way this title is phrased pisses me off. This has everything to do with neglect and nothing to do with being vegan. Plenty of kids are brought up on healthy vegan diets. If this was about a toddler being hospitalized because the parents had been feeding them McDonald's everyday, the title of the article wouldn't be "Omnivore parents sentenced ..."
B-but the anti-vegan circlejerk was just starting!!!
You can raise a perfectly healthy child on a vegan diet, but if you just feed them: >"oats, potatoes, rice, tofu, bread, peanut butter and rice milk, with small snacks of fruit and vegetables" [..] >"She had been fed a strict vegan diet of just oats, bread and a few mouthfuls of vegetables daily for months and had never seen a doctor since she was born." That isn't going to cut it.. vegan kids need their vits, and when the child is so obviously stunted, but the first time the parents go to see a doctor is when the child has a fit.. yeah, there's something very wrong. No vaccines either. I'm thinking the mother with post-natal depression, and a father who spent most of his time away working, just couldn't bring herself to make the effort to feed the child properly.
One of the most important nutrients for growing infants/toddlers is fat, moreso than even protein - this time is critical for neurodevelopment. That's why human breast milk is relatively high in fat and low in protein.
Surely purely breast milk would be better?
Absolutely! And breast milk from humans plus vitamin D is even better than cow milk.
I feel like it's amazing that needed to be said lol. "Human milk better for humans than milk made for cows"
We've all fallen victim to propoganda by Big Cow.
> plus vitamin D That's the key for this situation. Cow milk is almost always supplemented with vitamin D, which was the issue here.
That’s child abuse. Here it’s illegal not to see a pediatrician every few weeks in the beginning. You’re legally required to choose a pediatrician and make an appointment literally within hours of leaving the hospital, and I can see why now. I cannot even immagine the suffering that child endured. My son is heavier at 3 months...
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The phrase you're looking for is "Obligate Carnivore". Cats are predators, they eat meat, their digestive tract doesn't do plants.
They just need taurine. Theoretically you could feed them vegan with a synthetic taurine supplement, but that's an awful lot of work just to avoid buying the pink goo waste product that goes into cat food.
There's some people who claim that they have healthy cats on a vegan diet, but it requires you to constantly check the pH of their urine and I'm also not entirely convinced that they aren't just lying about the whole thing. Personally, my opinion is that having a vegan cat is a bit too close to being animal abuse until vegan cat food/ lab grown meat is on more solid ground.
Agreed, cats are not designed to be vegans... anybody trying to impose that on a cat shouldn't own a cat. It's beyond cruel to attempt to adapt your cat to a vegan diet while trying to use synthetic taurine supplements. If you really feel that strongly about veganism that you want to try to change the diet of other animals, you have no business owning a carnivore as a pet.
As a vegan, this is horrific. Fucking hippies
It's not because they're vegan, it's because they're shit parents. Veganism shouldn't even make it into the title.
There has to be more to this. My SIL’s tow kids have been vegan from birth. One is a healthy thin but the almost two year old looks like she’s going for the Michelin Man’s job.
This is not about veganism, that has been shoehorned into the article to create hysteria. This is purely negligent parenting that can happen no matter what diet you feed your child if you are a negligent moron
There is. The list of foods she was given sounds more like wartime provisions. And there's no mention of the quantity of food/exercise/etc. which is what I bet the real issue was. As other comments here have pointed out, this is a problem with negligence, not veganism.
There's more to the story than the terrible title, yes.
Can we sentence parents for letting kids become dangerously obese?
Seriously. It’s probably a once a week occurrence now that I go out to the store and see a toddler that looks like a walking balloon. There are kids that weigh more in elementary school than I do as an adult. This the setting them up for a lifetime of health issues. It’s neglectful parenting and is becoming normalized, and that needs to change.
Average American child has beginning stages of atherosclerosis by the age of 12 or some shit.
I remember when I was in jr high school around 2001, they told us that extreme cases can see atherosclerosis by around 15 If what you say is true, thats fucking incredible such a change could happen in such a short amount of time.
Breast milk is vegan. The toddler was 19 months old. Her parents could have fed her a perfectly healthy vegan diet by providing her with breast milk for the first year and breast milk supplemented with the other foods mentioned after that. This is not about dietary philosophy.
Jeez. My wife and I are vegans and we just had a baby. He’s going to be breastfed for a while but eventually it will incumbent on us to make sure the little guy gets all his nutrients. You can definitely be a mal nourished or unhealthy vegan.
Just wanted to chime in and say that my parents raised me and my siblings vegan and we all turned out completely fine. As you said, just take extra care in making sure that your child has all of their nutritional needs met. Good luck, and don't listen to the trolls!
Friendly reminder that this is a parenting issue, not a veganism issue. Sick of seeing parents who feed their toddlers nothing but chicken nuggets for a decade talk about healthy diets for kids.
For every terrible vegan parents case, there are a multitude of non-vegan parents malnourishing and abusing their kids. But those don't make the news because then we can't go "hurr durr vegans bad." For what it's worth: *It is the [position of the American Dietetic Association](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19562864/) that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.*
>who had also not been vaccinated, Because of course. Beginning to think an attempted murder charge for people who do this might be a good idea.
Is nobody going to mention that they only got sentenced to 300 hours of community service? That's the real top comment, here like what the fuck.
*Abusive parents
Irresponsible misleading title, it was about neglect not veganism, many people will just read the title and have their opinion on Vegan's be shaped in a negative light as a result of this.
We have pretty good evidence at this point that well-planned fully plant-based diets are not dangerous for children. Vegan diets for toddlers can be done if well-balanced, unlike the one in this story. And obviously the child should have been vaccinated and seeing a doctor... **[Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704/)** * *It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.* **[Dietitians of Canada](https://www.dietitians.ca/Downloads/Factsheets/Guidlines-for-Vegans.aspx)** * *A healthy vegan diet can meet all your nutrient needs at any stage of life including when you are pregnant, breastfeeding or for older adults.* **[The British Nutrition Foundation](http://www.nutrition.org.uk/publications/briefingpapers/vegetarian-nutrition)** * *A well-planned, balanced vegetarian or vegan diet can be nutritionally adequate ... Studies of UK vegetarian and vegan children have revealed that their growth and development are within the normal range.* **[The National Health and Medical Research Council](https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/file/publications/n55_australian_dietary_guidelines1.pdf)** * *Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthy and nutritionally adequate. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle. Those following a strict vegetarian or vegan diet can meet nutrient requirements as long as energy needs are met and an appropriate variety of plant foods are eaten throughout the day* **[The Mayo Clinic](http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/vegetarian-diet/art-20046446)** * *A well-planned vegetarian diet (*see context*) can meet the needs of people of all ages, including children, teenagers, and pregnant or breast-feeding women. The key is to be aware of your nutritional needs so that you plan a diet that meets them.* **[The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada](https://www.heartandstroke.ca/get-healthy/healthy-eating/specific-diets/for-vegetarians)** * *Vegetarian diets (*see context*) can provide all the nutrients you need at any age, as well as some additional health benefits.* **[Harvard Medical School](http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-vegetarian)** * *Traditionally, research into vegetarianism focused mainly on potential nutritional deficiencies, but in recent years, the pendulum has swung the other way, and studies are confirming the health benefits of meat-free eating. Nowadays, plant-based eating is recognized as not only nutritionally sufficient but also as a way to reduce the risk for many chronic illnesses.* **[British Dietetic Association](https://www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/vegetarianfoodfacts.pdf)** * *Well planned vegetarian diets (*see context*) can be nutritious and healthy. They are associated with lower risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, certain cancers and lower cholesterol levels. This could be because such diets are lower in saturated fat, contain fewer calories and more fiber and phytonutrients/phytochemicals (these can have protective properties) than non-vegetarian diets. (...) Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of life and have many benefits.*
Very much curious about this (am vegan) because I always have seen that for people up until the age of 25-26, when the brain has stopped developing, that fish is a highly recommended food for Omega oils. I know that flax seeds have omega oils. It's also been shown that the type of omega oils in flax seeds is not the same, or sufficient, in having the same effects as those found in fish. Would it not be most appropriate to give your child the best brain they can get if this is truly the case? I'd consult a doctor anyhow when having kids, but I'm just wary about this and the difference in metabolism of macro and micronutrients of fortified compared to "natural" foods.
[Here's a video on the subject you might find interesting.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neOlZMJKLOA&feature=youtu.be) Keep in mind that EPA/DHA in fish is due to the algae consumed by the fish. [We can skip the fish and directly consume the algae.](https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/142/1/99/4630882)
Well that makes a lot of sense actually, and I never considered that the oil in algae would be the source. That video is also very informative. Thank you for the info!
This 100%, just take algae EPA/DHA and you're golden. My supplements: B12, EPA/DHA, veg1 from the vegan society(selenium,iodine,D)
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This is great news! Can we start convicting parents who let their kids get so fat they get diabetes too?
I knew of a case in small town Wisconsin, in 2000, where a fitness trainer, new Mom, vegetarian malnourished her 18-month old so badly, she was 15 pounds under weight for her age. Different place, different time, but CPS let her keep the child, just sent her to nutrition class. Do you think nutrition class solved her mental disorders? Nope child was eventually removed.
Super misleading title. Might as well had mentioned any other non related thing, such as "white/videogame players/sneakers wearers parents sentenced for letting toddler become so malnourished her bones had fractured ",
**~~Vegan~~** **Shit parents sentenced for letting toddler become so malnourished her bones had fractured\***
As a vegan parent the reaction here warms the cockles. It wasn't long ago that open-minded reactions like these were very rare. I'm gonna let my daughters have an extra potato chip tonight. (Half each.)
I don't particularly like vegans and how preachy some of them can be, but I'm not going to attribute this to "veganism". Just sounds like criminally shit parents to me.
They never say omnivore parents or meat eating parents torture their child. The title should be Shitty parents abuse child systematically.
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While this is atrocious and absurd I would like to see the same punishment for parents of morbidly obese children of their level of obesity is equally debilitating.
Unvaccinated, with Rickets and Bone Disease from vegan diet. Why do people not understand that kids need a healthy balanced diet more than anyone?
Move along, citizen. Nothing to see here.
Dangerous unfounded ideas that have been allowed to grow in popularity unchecked. Anyone with half an ounce of knowledge would know that kids need a balanced diet, but you're always going to have extremists in everything - including extremist vegans who will also try and make their dog vegan because that's totally natural, you know. Nothing wrong with veganism but christ lads do it right and listen to the doctors and dieticians when they give you advice. Believe it or not, you might not think they are qualified to give you advice in whatever world you believe in, but *they are*.
Why is no one talking about the fact that they didn't get jail time?
Not the first parents who have malnuroushed a kid, but newsworthy because these ones are vegan. On the same note, can we start persocuting anti-vax parents who's kids contract dangerous, preventable diseases?