If you are a parent considering raising your child plant-based, consider the case of a 12-year-old girl raised on a strict vegan diet. The girl ended up in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow, Scotland suffering from a severe form of rickets.
The girl had already experienced multiple fractures and been diagnosed with a degenerated spine comparable to that of an unhealthy 80-year-old woman.
Fast Food Diet Better for a Child than Veganism
Say what you will about a child who eats junk food, if the diet overall includes animal foods like eggs, meat and dairy…even if from fast food joints…this type of bone degeneration simply does not happen.
For all the downsides of The Standard American Diet, it is shockingly still a better choice than even a whole food vegan diet (aka “plant-based”) that is devoid of numerous critical nutrients a growing child’s body demands.
Pediatrician Discredits Veganism for Children
Media reports indicate that the hospital doctors were under pressure to report the girl’s parents to police and social workers.
Dr. Faisal Ahmed, a pediatrician treating the girl, warned that the dangers of forcing children to follow a strict vegan diet need to be publicized. (1)
If raised strictly vegan, the child would almost certainly have severe deficiencies of Vitamins A and D, both of which are essential bone nutrients that can only be obtained from animal foods.
For example, using aquafaba instead of eggs and plant-based meat substitutes can prove very dangerous.
In all likelihood, the child would also be lacking needed calcium, zinc (the intelligence mineral), B-12 as well as other B vitamins, Vitamin K2, the EPA and DHA fatty acids, and the sulfur containing amino acids methionine and cysteine.
Although the human body is theoretically capable of converting beta carotene from vegetables like carrots into true Vitamin A, children are not able to do so efficiently if at all.
Sunlight could have provided Vitamin D but only if the family spent a lot of time outdoors year-round in a tropical area. Northern climes like Scotland simply do not offer the benefit of Vitamin D-producing sunlight for much of the year.
Other Cases of Child Vegans Suffering Severe Nutritional Deficiencies
Sadly, this is not the first time vegans have been accused of child abuse though it may be the first case involving crippling bone damage. More typically, vegan babies end up in the hospital from malnutrition caused by the use of soy milk instead of infant formula.
Given soy milk alone, babies end up with severe vitamin, mineral, fatty acid, and amino acid deficiencies, which is why soy formula manufacturers are required by law to add methionine and other nutrients that are critical for a baby’s growth.
In 1990, the FDA investigated after a two month old girl in California was hospitalized with severe malnutrition. Her parents had fed her soy milk instead of soy formula. Because of this and a similar incident in Arkansas involving the SoyMoo brand of soy milk, the FDA issued a warning on June 13, 1990. Since then, most brands of soy milk include warning labels in tiny print on their packages.
Clearly, voluntary warning labels have not been enough, and there have been deaths as well as hospitalizations of vegan babies fed soy milk. Vegan parents in Atlanta were found guilty of the death of their six-month-old baby. To supplement the mother’s inadequate supply of breast milk the parents had fed their son soy milk and apple juice. The baby was only 3 1/2 pounds when he died of starvation. (3)
The sad truth is that numerous vegans have been charged and found guilty of unintentionally starving their children from all across the globe, including parents in Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Australia, and the United States among others. (4-10)
Vegan Breastfeeding Dangerous Too
In France, a vegan couple was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the death of their 11-month-old daughter. The baby, who was only 12.5 pounds at the time of her death, had been exclusively breastfed by a vegan mother.
An autopsy showed her to be not only severely underweight and malnourished but severely deficient in Vitamins A and B12. (2, 11-12)
The mother had cared enough to breastfeed, but had an inadequate supply of poor quality milk because of the severe nutritional limitations of her plant-based diet.
While veganism for very young children can be catastrophic, the tragic case of the 12-year-old Scottish girl illustrates that plant based diets for older children are also dangerous. Although finally getting medical treatment, the child’s long-term prognosis for recovery and a normal life remains grim.
Sadly, the word about the dangers of veganism for children doesn’t seem to be getting through to the general public. The continual barrage of highly flawed propaganda-ridden, documentaries such as What The Health guarantees that more well-intentioned but seriously misinformed vegan child malnourishment cases are likely to follow.
References
(1) Parents of 12-Year-Old Vegan Girl Who Has Degenerative Condition May Face Charges
(2) French Vegans Charged with Neglect After Baby’s Death from Nutritional Deficiencies
(3) Vegan Couple Serving Life Sentences for Starving Baby to Death
(4) Vegan Couple Who Fed Child Only Raw Fruit and Vegetables Charged with Murder
(5) Sydney vegan couple starved 20-month-old girl leaving her toothless and with rickets
(6) Baby Death: Parents Convicted of Killing Son with a Diet of Vegetable Milk
(7) Swedish Parents Jailed for Almost Starving Vegan Toddler to Death
(8) Strict vegan parents starved their baby of nutrients so badly that the one-year-old developed cerebral palsy and was in intensive care for a month with rashes and internal bleeding
(9) Italian baby raised on a vegan diet hospitalized for severe malnutrition, removed from parents
(10) Vegan couple will serve life sentences for starving baby to death, Georgia court rules
(11) French Couple Sentenced to 5 Years in Jail for Vegan Breastfeeding Death of 11 Month Old Baby
(12) Vegan Parents Face Jail
The lack of understanding by many vegan commenters of the various forms of K and D make it evident how this girl ended up with rickets!! Please do your research! Horrifying.
I believe veganism should be a choice for a grown adult to make on their own without their parent’s influence. If parents choose to be vegan for whatever reason, that is their choice, but they should not make their kids or babies follow the diet until they are old enough to make their own decision. I believe it is a form of abuse to make your kids stick to a vegan diet just because of your personal beliefs, especially when there are so many cases of child veganism causing serious health issues.
And I agree, poor parental decisions such as not going to a qualified physician for help when your milk supply was not sufficient for the baby is more to blame that veganism itself.
are you kidding.. any parent who gives soda, refined grains refined sweetners/sugar , hormone antibiotic treated animal flesh infected milk products, are damaging their offspring!! but not to to worry physicians do not help parents feed their children whole fresh ripe raw organic fruits and vegetables so these cannot be good for them, they do not recommend exercise but recommend disgusting drugs and mind control treatments such as ritalin.. these are all good things because some medic says as much.. give me a break
Egad … what sort of doctors are YOU going to? Our pediatrician is a huge proponent of lots of exercise and whole foods.
(And, fwiw, as a person who has ADD and has a child with ADD, Ritalin is not a “mind control treatment.” It is a medication that has helped me to function greatly when NOTHING else worked.)
But that’s what parents do: make choices for their children until they are old enough to do so themselves. Anything you choose to feed your children is just that – a choice you are making for them. And in many ways we make choices for our children based on our values (what religion, if any, to follow; where to go to school). I much prefer that people make conscious choices about what to feed their children (and themselves) rather than just giving whatever food is easiest. We should all be aware of the nutritional needs of our children and meet those needs but making food choices for our children in and of itself is not unethical.
what a remarkably dishonest and disreputable article.. professional (as in trained in a common place approach) nutritionists seem to ignore the most basic facts of food science.. the most readily absorbed source of calcium are green leaves ..how foolish and unkind to suggest veganism is a poor choice when diabetes and obesity are the serial killers of folk who indulge in the filth of the modern day diet
Jane, if you had any clue as to the type of blog you are posting on here, then you would know that readers here do not “indulge in the filth of the modern day diet”. Perhaps you should take your “foolish and unkind” comment elsewhere.
Kids fed an omnivorous diet can and do also develop rickets. Rickets is a vitamin D deficiency (it’s not having “the bones of an 80 yo”) and it used to be extremely common. It’s no longer all that common because all dairy milk is fortified with vitamin D. Milk doesn’t often have vitamin D naturally … it’s added to the milk. It’s D2 that’s added to the milk, as well … which is the plant derived form. The plant based D2 is the most effective at preventing vitamin D deficiency.
It’s not the milk that prevents rickets. It’s the supplements added to the milk that prevents rickets. All the milk is doing is adding hormones such as estrogen (one reason we know dairy causes breast cancer), the also cancer causing IGF-1, and the saturated fat that kills nearly 50% of Americans prematurely.
This is a highly irresponsible article, by someone who doesn’t appear to understand very basic biology and nutrition, and that goes against every bit of the scientific evidence.
No, you have it wrong. Most milk is now fortified with D3 – and has been for quite some time – because new research indicated that D2 is not sufficient or effective for bone support. The amount added is also very, very low.
And finally, there are plenty of sources of milk that does not have added hormones. To say that is like saying all plants have estrogens because they are sprayed with pesticides that act as xenoestrogens. In fact, you can get organic vegetables.
I will let someone else get into correcting the old tired myth of saturated fat causing heart disease. Your reply is lacking in any recent research. (And by recent I mean the past 30 years.) I hope your blog has better information!
P.S. Watch “Why In The World Are They Spraying?” and get mad at the greedy folks who are destroying our food supply so you can’t have an opinion at all….
I’m vegan and healthy, you say a lot of shit!
Andrea, you just lowered yourself at least 5 notches on a scale of 1-5. So happy you are healthy physically; might think about meditation to take the edge of that grouchy attitude.
I would say that the author of this article had a very grouchy and dismissive attitude towards vegans. While Andrea was crude about it, she is correct.
I would like to mention that meat industry is very cruel to animals. Animals, birds, fishes are our friends, our family. We should care for them, protect them and give them their rights to live. Modern man is so intelligent, he/she knows how to grow varities of crops, veggies, fruits, herbs, spices, nuts, pulses, lentils, cereals, seeds, roots..bamboo pulp..so many varieties of food is being grown. If we organize our diet, have a feeling of share and care for each other, if we show human values and compassion, if we discourage these big co-oporartion and meat industries and money making inhumane slaughter houses then we can bring a big huge positive change for all our people, animals and for this planet. When I see the beauty in pigs and cows, see their lovely deep eyes, when I see how they have ability to reproduce and love their babies I feel so touched. My only appeal is to protect animals and give them their natural right to live..especially these wonderful animals like cows, sheeps, goats, amazing lovely fishes and birds who have never ever hurt us. So as humans, having such refined intellect and an ability to evolve and discover, reason and think..we all can slowly become wellwishers of all the beings who share this earth with us, try to be least violent to nature. But still we can always have a meaningful symbiotic relationships with animals where we can help each other without hurting anyone. Instead of misusing the cows for so much lavish amounts of cheese and icecreams, we can understand our real needs and reduce our greed for pleasure. Then no animal, no human, nobody will have to suffer. May all beings be happy, may we all be happy, may peace and love make our lives worth living, worth sharing! Peace and light – Jeenal
About the whole soy milk/infant formula bit… veganism should not be to blame for these babies’ malnutrition. The issue here comes from parents’ stupidity. The density of nutrients an infant needs requires that either A)You breast-feed your baby. Make sure to talk to your doctor and have the nutritional profile of your blood screen routinely for deficincies during pregnancy and the baby’s breastfeeding timespan.You should already be seeing your doctor routinely anyway, so this shouldn’t be too much of an issue. or B)You look for the best formula you can find for your baby, vegan or not. Ask a vegan friendly doctor if you have to. Wanting to eliminate animal suffering is great, as a vegan I get that, but if your infant child is suffering, you may want to discuss a few minor things you can relax in the baby’s diet just until he/she is past infancy age.
This child’s case of bones that are that degenerated took years to get that bad, and would have been, ultimately, much more noticable before she hit 12 years old. Her parents made some wrong decisions early in her infancy, and as a result, this affected her bone development. (I’d like to also note briefly that I have a hard time believing and article whose main source comes from Fox News, and again, instead or blaming veganism as a whole, we need to prevent parents from making such lethal mistakes; more resources about a proper way to handle feeding an infant a vegan diet need to surface. Otherwise, too many first-time parents will end up losing their children.)
What exactly was the kid eating? Sure, if you feed the kid soda pop and potato chips for dinner, of course they aren’t going to be healthy. Soda pop and potato chip are vegan, therefore a vegan diet is to blame. That is simply ludicrous.
the problem is most of you can’t imagine cooking without meat and diary.
lol. probably most of you, if not eating meat, would eat bread or potatoes every day. things is that lot of vegetables are out there folks.
oh wait, in america they make pesto with parsley too, so i think that hamburgers it’s all you can do. learn to cook, learn about nutrients. they are in vegetables.
ps: basil is different from parsley , as pine nuts are different from classic nuts.
Dmitri, it seems you have not read any of this blog. If you had, you would know that Sarah writes about excellent nutrition. And that does include vegetables. You are making incorrect assumptions about most of Sarah’s readers.