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
Children need animal foods such as red meat, liver, eggs, full fat dairy and seafood. Any parent feeding their child a vegan diet deserves to go to prison. The only people who should be on a vegan diet are those who commit heinous crimes and deserve to be punished, particularly sex offenders and child molesters. Veganism is a scourge on humanity. In some countries children are malnourished because of extreme poverty, famine and war. In western countries, children are malnourished because of a dangerous cult.
There isn’t any science to support a vegan diet as being healthy for children. Absolutely none. There are no long term studies to show this diet is suitable. This is a grand experiment parents are performing on their children. It’s appalling how many people are willing to risk their children’s development and even lives for this ideology. These examples are just known extreme cases, so just imagine how many vegan children are not as bad off but who are not developing as well as they could be and who will suffer likely their whole lives as adults.
People and kids are not getting fat and sick from eating a traditional diet but refined processed foods like sugar and wheat. Factory farming including growing grain and animals is not nutrition for humans and is killing the Planet. What you all need to be fighting is fake food. You have to educate yourself about nutrition and food and not end up with brittle bones or malnutrition after 10 years of a Diet. Whatever diet you choose monitor your health through your doctor at least once a year with blood tests and if needed bone scans. Lets start fighting against fake foods and not each other. I eat all foods except fake.
This is misleading and dramatic. To promote a fast food diet over a well-balanced, plant-based diet that is done correctly is just plain wrong and dangerous to those who will take that information and give them an excuse to continue to eat food that promotes disease. There’s a reason the world is going to a plant-heavy or plant-based lifestyle. The research is out there on plant-based diets being very beneficial for overall health when done in a balanced way. All of the blue zones in the world ate/eat a plant-based or plant-heavy diet and it’s no coincidence that they are the healthiest populations with the highest longevity.
You lost a subscriber.
Growing children will not develop properly even on a whole food vegan diet. Girls raised this way will likely be infertile as adults. A child living on fast food if it contains real meat, eggs and dairy will develop ok….they might have weight issues but at least their bones won’t crumble (which is very difficult if not impossible to rectify).
I’m a real nutritionist. Vegan diet is the worst diet on Earth. No plants have EPA/DHA omega-3, vitamin D, B12, enough iron, enough calcium, enoufh carnitine, magnesium, or especially enough iodine.
The doctor does not want to say anything about the case, except VEGAN DIET IS WRONG!!! And we should believe that, why exactly? Because it comes from a doctor? I believe that the doctor is completely incompetent to find the real reason for the illness and instead of presenting a strong case, just blames on the parents and the food. Get lost! Doctors are not gods! I don’t roll over just because an unanimous doctor said something vague and dogmatic. I’m not stupid as the doctor would like me to be.
And they have very little to no training in nutrition.
In a vegan’s eyes, eating meat is bad because animals suffer and die because of something they cannot consent to, right? These kids being fed vegan diets can’t consent to it when their parents control what they eat, especially babies, and as you can see from just those examples they’re suffering and dying because of it. And even if veganism isn’t solely to blame, it sure isn’t helping, these kids aren’t getting all of the nutrients they need, they’re missing nutrients that can’t be found in a purely vegan diet. I understand wanting to avoid cruelty to animals of other species, but I feel like it’s more important to prioritize OUR species– our own d*mn children– first.
Also gonna go make chicken fried rice with scrambled eggs in it tonight to spite you.
Negating the superior health benefits of a well-balanced vegan diet is among the most ignorant things you can do. Every major health/nutrition organization supports the superior health benefits of a well-balanced vegan diet. This website is nothing more than propaganda from the meat industry.
“Well balanced” “vegan diet” is an oxymoron. A vegan diet is the very definition of unbalanced! Humans are omnivores, hence a balanced diet means BOTH plant and animal foods.
These vegans keep talking about the climate and overpopulation…. they are politically motivated it seems, or just not very smart at all. Forget the fact that they don’t even use the word global warming anymore….forget the fact that they thought we were going to run out of food decades ago and were proven wrong already….let’s just forget history and repeat our mistakes….sure….you can, but don’t try to make everyone else suffer for your own mistakes, including your children, because it seems they have trouble even feeding their own children correctly, what makes them think they are going to save the world if they can’t even keep their own children alive? Some real high morals there…. I’ve seen their vegan pets too on youtube, slowly starving, if they can be charged for abuse of their children, they should also be charged with animal abuse. These people are crazy.