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 case of less than 10 kids and veganism is now wrong?
How about the case of thousands upon thousands of kids dieing due to diabetes,heart disease,cancer,etc because of meat eating?
I always knew this page was no good. I gave it a try though. But this helped me understand, you’re a fool.
1. It’s a lot more than just 10 cases of veganism making children sick. Doctors see issues every year. Either veganism or SAD diet, one way or another and children are severely malnourished despite more food being produced now than in any other time in our planet’s history.
2. I think the thousands of children dying from diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. are more because of lack of activity and an overall poor diet consisting of packaged foods. Those packaged foods almost always contain SUGAR and STARCH (essentially the same thing) in high quantities. You add to that the huge amounts of trans fats and manmade ingredients and I think you’ll find that any child would start developing issues when fed that typical Western food for every meal. Most people think that’s normal and many don’t even know how to properly cook anymore. If society collapsed tomorrow they’d be right screwed.
So even if you think that meat is a terrible thing to eat, wouldn’t it be better to eat a traditional based diet that included a more balanced approach between grains, vegetables, fermented foods, dairy, and meat or do you REALLY think that what those kids are eating now is better? I really want to know what you think. I’m sure you’re convinced that vegetarianism/veganism is the ‘ideal’ (as many of us did when we started on our food journeys). But if you could only chose between processed foods in boxes (what most people eat) and a traditional whole foods diet which do you think would be healthier? Then take vegan versus traditional whole foods diet and see who’s healthier at the end. I think you’d be surprised!
Don’t be so foolish to assume that children are dying from diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc, because they eat meat. I know a two year old whose parents eat what is considered to be an extremely healthy diet (low fat) and don’t eat processed foods. He is now in hospital getting cancer treatment. Do you know what the parents have been told to do with his diet now that he’s sick? Eat meat and animals fats. Go figure, he’s now eating the very foods you claim caused his illness…
Do some research, including checking out the work of Weston Price, especially his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. You will become so much more enlightened as to the reasons the people who regularly follow this blog choose health through real foods, meat included. At the very least you’ll have an appreciation for why we do what we do and hopefully you’ll see we’re not all ‘fools’ after all.
Also, don’t mistake grassfed meat for confinement animals. I agree that eating meat from confinement animals is terrible. Grassfed organic all the way for our household.
*sigh*
http://www.sott.net/article/242516-Heart-Surgeon-Speaks-Out-On-What-Really-Causes-Heart-Disease
Jesus!
Kaayla-what type of credibility do you hope to master when you talk about something as if it is present tense-yet it happened 5 years ago? This is a parenting issue and nothing more. What about all of the parents with severely obese children. Why not address the atrocities in that?
BECAUSE BACON
(p.s. this is a joke, I am on your side)
Many vegans and others fanatically obsessed with health suffer from disordered eating, which our thin-obsessed society encourages. Here’s a great article on the signs of orthorexia:
http://www.youreatopia.com/blog/2012/1/27/women-laughing-alone-with-salad-orthorexia-nervosa.html
Whenever I read on this page that vegetarianism or veganism will cause our young girls to be infertile, it cracks me up. As I have cut back my meat & dairy consumption over the years, my fertility has only increased! It took a lot of trying for my first child & during that time I feared I may never have kids. My seventh baby is due next month. Thanks for the laugh. 🙂
… not to mention the fact that you were probably cutting back on hormone laden factory farmed milk and meat, which does have a negative affect on health and fertility. And I can generally assume that as you cut back on meat and dairy you were in the midst of a health conversion, so you were probably cutting back on processed foods too? An assumption, yes, but a safe one. That doesn’t mean that “good” meat and dairy would have the same effect.
I find your 12 year old girl reaction funny, so thanks for that.
tragic!
I think the perfect diet for most people is a balance between WAPF diet & raw vegan. I don’t think WAPF principles emphasizes enough the benefits of raw plant foods, and vice versa- raw veganism doesn’t emphasize the benefits of certain animal foods and fats.
I went looking for more info on the story of the girl with rickets. Sadly,what I found was pro-veganism reaction trying to deny the significance of the story. Right off the bat, I saw misinformation on just how far south you need to be from Scotland’s lattitude to rely on the sun for your vitamin D as well as encouragement that people should rely on “fortified” foods for their children’s vitamin D needs. This breaks my heart, but it is definitely a area where people can see the problem if we share what we have learned with them. There is no high level logic or data evaluation skills needed to point out the good sense involved in choosing to eat natural whole foods rather than relying on laboratory produced synthetic “vitamins” to nourish our bodies! And there is solid evidence from the world of science to show us more about vitamin D from sunlight!
The way the human system operates in general is pretty black and white, except when there are diseases and illness, but even still the way the human body reacts to that is pretty standard. People do have allergies to different things, but what the human body needs nutrition-wise for optimal health, without any disease, it’s the same for most everyone.
In case no body mention, being a vegan is very different, and more challenging, than being vegetarian