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
Monica – if you have only “cut back” then you aren’t vegan or vegetarian! Not a focused or logical comment. The point was veganism and vegetarianism are often related to infertility. No one said to eat enormous amounts of meat to increase fertility. Two different things. Cut back and eat more veggies is often a good thing if you were eating them out of proportion. And, especially, if you were eating dairy, eggs and meat from animals fed soy -whether GMO or organic. Soy reduces fertility, whether you are eating it directly or second hand from animals who have eaten soy. Also, many animal products contain hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, etc. If you were not eating quality meat, dairy & eggs then you were eating unhealthy food and cutting back on an unhealthy food would indeed increase your health. But the unhealthy food was low quality meat, eggs & dairy not the meat, eggs and diary themselves.
Vegans don’t eat any meat, dairy or eggs and that is unhealthy. Do the research…Glad you are eating proportionately of healthy things and are now healthier. Blessings with birth No. 7!
Monica . Very interesting It is funny Because my wife More milk eggs and butter and redmeat she eats during the pregnancy. She said her labor it’s much easier
Cutting back is not the same as completely excluding.
I think any diet that requires supplements for health is obviously not optimal, but for me my problems with vegans have more to do with their lifestyle. They seem to have lost sight of the fact that even vegetables NEED animals to grow. There is no form of sustainable gardening that doesn’t involve animal manure. Not to mention that there are reasons we don’t see flocks of wild chickens and sheep… because they are DOMESTICATED animals and cannot survive in the wild (with rare exceptions) without human intervention.
And vegans don’t believe in wool products, which I can’t quite put my head around. You HAVE to shear sheep, even if you aren’t raising them for wool. Their health requires it. So why can’t we use it?
A Balance Diet is the Healthiest.
Please let me clarify – these babies were given soy milk, NOT soy infant formula. That’s like giving your 3 month old cow’s milk, instead of infant formula. No wonder the babies were malnourished!
Do you mean infant formula instead of cow’s milk? (Healthy cow’s milk?) I can’t imagine any formula being much more than powdered SAD. 🙁
Agreed. There are no truly good infant formulas on the market. No matter how much they keep improving them, they are not whole foods as our bodies are designed to need. Breast milk from a well nourished mother is what is far and away the best, nay, the optimal food for baby! Now that I am reclaiming my own health, I’m also working to nourish my kids and educate them on how to prepare to be healthy for life and have healthy kids!
I have a similar spinal condition as this little girl, and mine came about in my 20s, after being vegan for years. (yes, I was a “healthy” vegan…) Lierre Keith, the author of The Vegetarian Myth, also has Degenerative Disc Disease, she blames it on her veganism too. I know and know of many other young folks with serious health issues after being vegan, so we’re not just isolated incidents. I’d love to see more solid research on it.
It makes me so sad that myself, and so many other people, go on that diet thinking it’s perfectly healthy, and then end-up with terrible, sometimes irreversible health problems.
Thank-you for sharing your experience!
I’d like to know if there have been any truly traditional cultures that were vegan. I think I’ve read that there were none, but would like that confirmed. By traditional, I mean for many thousands of years eating the same type of diet in the same home territory, not people who have been displaced or colonized, etc. The test of time usually shows people what works and what doesn’t for health and longevity; that is why Weston A. Price studied people living in their traditional way and eating their traditional diet. I don’t believe any societies have found that a vegan diet stands the test of time. Are there any lacto-vegetarian traditional cultures that don’t eat any meat or eggs, ever? I don’t know.
So far as I have been able to find there are none. Of course “proof” that something never existed is exactly the opposite of easy to find. Essentially you can prove those you can document and you can assume that anything you can’t find is either rare in the extreme or doesn’t exist. 🙂
Interestingly, Weston Price, had expected to find that vegetarians were the healthiest when he set out to study non-industrial diets. But he was wise to not argue with the reality once he found it. 😉
The only source listed for this article is Fox News. They lie. They are predisposed to be anti anything that doesn’t pump money into bigAg, bigPharma, bigOil. While I hold no hope for fair and balanced from your source, I have much higher expectations from you.
I would like to ask how many kids are suffering from rickets and other such concerns that eat meat & drink dairy? I’ve read article specifically in this issue where vegan was never mentioned rather a lack of vit. D. This article blames bring vegan when the truer culprit is lack of vit. D from lack of sun. I would say most people in the northern hemisphere are deficient & many children are suffering from lack of this vital vit.
I would encourage everyone to get their levels checked & supplement this deficiency.
As research states, Milk & meat pull calcium from the bones due to its acidity. I supplement with calcium & vit. D, k, b12, etc. my vegan kids. They are growing and functioning well in the Seattle area:)
Gosh! I feel sad for your kids. Just as sad as I feel for the “fast food” kids.
We are in the Seattle area and enjoy salmon all season long, a great natural source of D. This is probably how native peoples thrived in this area before supplements.