God Gave Us Pointy Teeth
…for a reason
A girl of 12 brought up by her parents on a strict vegan diet has been admitted to hospital with a degenerative bone condition said to have left her with the spine of an 80-year-old.
Doctors are under pressure to report the couple, from Glasgow, to police and social workers amid concerns her health and welfare may have been neglected in pursuit of their beliefs.
The youngster, fed on a strict meat- and dairy-free diet from birth, is being treated at the city’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. She is said to have a severe form of rickets and to have suffered a number of fractured bones. The condition is caused by a lack of vitamin D, which is needed to absorb calcium and is found in liver, oily fish and dairy produce.
Dr Faisal Ahmed, the consultant treating the child, said he believed the dangers of forcing children to follow a strict vegan diet needed to be highlighted. “Something like this needs publicity,” he said. However, he refused to blame the parents, who are understood to be well-known figures in Glasgow’s vegan community: “We shouldn’t name and shame \. Mum feels guilty about the whole thing and feels bad about it.”
Tough poop about how poor “mum” feels; what about the girl? I’m sure this fine doctor wouldn’t hesitate to name the parents if they had done something truly outrageous, like say spanking her instead. As my Bride just commented, parents who place their ideology ahead of the well-being of their children deserve public scorn…and constant visits from the Child Welfare Agencies.
(h/t to HotAir)
Morality | Mr. Bingley | 
June 11, 2008 6:45 pm
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Er, does veganism forbid the use of vitamin supplements to replace the things you NEED from animal products to be healthy? These parents are criminally stupid and should be sterilized (in addition to a good long time trying to be vegans in jail).
I work with a number of strict vegans, who have been such their whole lives. Certainly a child can be raised healthily within such a dietary framework. That leads me to think that either the girl has some other condition which was exacerbated by the diet, or her parents really screwed up something.
“Certainly a child can be raised healthily within such a dietary framework.”
W-a-a-a-a-a-a-y too risky. Adults choosing their diet of preference is one thing, forcing such a diet on a child or adolescent is skirting the borderline of abuse.
I’m with Gunslinger.
We’ve been consuming meat and dairy products for generations, going back to when Ugga The Caveman was a hunter/gatherer, not a farmer. Agriculture and husbandry are simply more efficient means of obtaining food. We are talking about thousands of generations of people here.
Veganism is a choice of lifestyle, a philosophy at odds with human evolution. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad choice, but everyone needs a proper and balanced diet, ESPECIALLY during childhood. AFAIK, that’s been “common knowledge” since humanity started building permanent settlements. For example, rickets has long been a childhood scourge.
Modern technology permit vegans to live without going through extreme contortions to get the proper foods (a point that they often miss, ironic since many are also ardent environmentalists). But childhood is a critical part of their development, and deliberately ignoring our history in favor of personal agendas places the child at risk.
Maybe this child had some pre-existing condition, and maybe the parents provided dietary supplements. But this is borderline abuse, and certainly over the line stupidity.
My wife and I are vegan (save some fish oil and soy cheese). Our kids are NOT vegan. Kids need all the fat and minerals they can get. Milk, cheese, eggs, are all part of their diet. It’s really hard to be an adult vegan and get all the nutrition you need – almost impossible for a kid. That said, you don’t need non-vegan stuff for vitamin D, just get some sunlight. Did they keep her inside all the time?
Brint, you and your bride sound like very sensible people. I hope your diet does everything for you that you hope it will.
A very sensible approach, Brint. I’m glad to see it!
Dave J: These vegans are insane.They have a mental illness that is never spoken of in public.
My oldest son from 14 to 18 was a vegan.He finally snapped
out of it, and now eats meat.He is now 24 and looks and acts like a normal human,successful and makes
hundred thousand a year.
The human brain requires certain amino acids available only in meat or fish.When deprived of those, people go into starvation mode and become
very self-centered. That is why many young people
are so self-centered.
That is why Chinese people used to drown babies
and in Africa the young males would throw elders
out of the hut and allow them to starve to death.
Their brains were in starvation mode-even though their bodies had full stomaches-they became self-centered.The opposite is also true:The Donner
party ate human bodies,not so much from starvation,
but from a craving for vitamins that were not available from the cow hides and tallow they had lived on for months.They tended to eat the vital organs as a source of those vitamins.
This will never be found in anything else you’ll
ever read(believe me)
Ah, heck, I don’t know if I’d go that far, greg. I know several vegans who have made the conscious choice to give up meat for a variety of reasons; some for perceived health benefits, be it weight or their cholesterol level being somewhere north of Canada, and some because they don’t want to harm animals and it makes them feel politically and/or morally superior. We can chuckle perhaps at the over-tenderness of their feelings or question the logic of their reasoning but I don’t think that qualifies them as ‘insane.’ While I certainly agree that our bodies do require certain animal-based amino acids and other nutrients I must say I know all too many very self-centered young people, and I can testify that the weightier part of them enjoy a Philly Cheese steak as much as I do.
IIRC (I’m not a nutritionist) the only good non-animal source of Vitamin D is the kind our body makes upon exposure to sunlight (which, as an aside, is why some anthropologists hypothesize that Northern Europeans retain lactose tolerance into adulthood – so they can continue to get Vitamin D from dairy).
The kid lived in GLASGOW. The no-milk, no-fish-oil diet might not have been an issue if she had lived in Barcelona, but that far north – you’re going to need LOTS of sun exposure – possibly more than Glasgow can offer – to get enough Vitamin D that way.
It is possible to be vegan and healthy (I know people who do it) but it is very tricky and you do sometimes have to supplement (vitamin b12 is another one that’s very hard to get from purely plant sources).
This is kind of like the fat-phobic parents who give their kids skim milk, broccoli, and brown rice and wonder why the kid suffers from “failure to thrive.” Children have different – greater – calorie, fat, and nutrient needs than adults.
If I were God and were re-making the human race? I’d make sterility the default condition and only allow people to breed when they had shown they wouldn’t screw up their kids.
I still think they’re all crazy,Ha! Ha!
Hitler was a vegetarian.And he loved his dog,Blondie.