Vegan breastfeeding has caused an 11-month-old baby to die and the parents are charged with neglect after an autopsy indicated the baby suffered from severe deficiencies in Vitamin B12 and Vitamin A. Both these nutrients are known to be critical to a child’s development and sorely lacking in a vegan diet. This is why doctors strongly advise against nursing mothers and growing children following a vegan diet (1).
Vegans have long been advised to take B12 supplements as long term veganism runs the huge risk of serious B12 deficiency as well as other nutrients only found in animal foods such as true Vitamin A. Â Beta carotene is not true vitamin AÂ nor does it easily convert to adequate amounts of Vitamin A in the body to sustain optimal health.
While charging the parents in this tragedy is questionable as it smacks of too much interference by government into private life, it does communicate a clear message to other vegans:Â abstinence from all animal foods is a danger to one’s health and most particularly, your baby!
It also sends a clear message that what a nursing Mother eats definitely DOES affect the quality of her breastmilk, particularly with vegan breastfeeding. Many breastfeeding advocates insist that breastmilk will include all a baby needs despite what the Mother eats, but clearly this is not the case.
Traditional cultures took great care to ensure that pregnant and breastfeeding mothers consumed ample amounts of animal foods rich in vitamins A, D, E, K2 and of course B12. These foods included grass-fed butter, pastured eggs, liver, seafood, and fish eggs. Notice that none – NOT ONE of these traditionally sacred foods is plant-based!
Incidentally, the 2017 vegan film What The Health was unable to cite a single successful vegan population group either. Why? Because there are none. Ever.
If you are pregnant and breastfeeding and would like to learn what foods will maximally support the health of your baby while nursing, please check this link for the complete listing of traditionally sacred foods for optimal fetal and baby development. These foods will also ensure the preservation of your own health during pregnancy and lactation which can easily deplete a Mother’s nutritional stores leaving her vulnerable to exhaustion.
Vegan Parents Convicted
The vegan breastfeeding mother and father whose baby died as described in this article were convicted by a French court to 5 years in prison due to the imbalanced vegan diet the mother ate which led to nutrient-poor breastmilk and a failure to thrive child who eventually fell ill from severe nutrient deficiency and died without the parents ever seeking proper medical attention (source).
For more information on how vegan breastfeeding and also a vegan diet devastate the health of children, read about how a 12-year-old vegan was diagnosed with the degenerating bones of an 80-year-old.  Dr. Faisal Ahmed MD, a pediatrician treating the child, said that the dangers of forcing children to follow a strict vegan diet need to be publicized.
Unfortunately, vegan parents don’t seem to be getting the message quickly enough. The latest case involves vegans who nearly starved their 5-month-old baby to death feeding him potato mash instead of the doctor advised organic formula.
The child, who weighed just over 8 pounds and had sunken eyes and protruding ribs, is recovering but will likely suffer long-term damage from the experience (source).
References
Angelina Jolie says veganism nearly killed her
Supersize Me Girlfriend Quits VeganismÂ
Vitamin A Vagary
Vitamin B12: Vital Nutrient for Good Health
French vegan couple whose baby died of vitamin deficiency after being fed solely on breast milk face jail for child neglect
I don’t care what you want to do with your life… BUT.. when you bring a baby into this world you DO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING to provide that baby with EVERYTHING it needs! If you fail to do that, you fail as a parent. But she’s not the only one who failed that baby.. so did her doctors!!
Shame on the lot of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everyone can argue all they like about the pros and cons of any diet. The problem in this case lies not with the vegan diet but with both parents of this child. A vitamin deficiency that results in death does not occur over night but builds over time and displays symptoms in the child /adult that indicates medical attention is required. This child was 11 months old before death and you can’t argue there would have been many indicators that the child was sick before death occurred. The simple fact is that the parents (not just the mother) ignored the indicators that their child’s health was depleting and failed to seek medical attention that in France is readily available. It’s not a case that a vegan diet caused this baby to die but a case of parental neglect. Any parent knows when their child is sick and if death is imminent then surely the parents would have known their child was gravely ill. Argue all you like about food (all of which is affected by mans interference with all food) this case isn’t about diet it’s purely about neglect.
In this case Carrieb, you are smearing lip stick on the pig. The pig is that the mother’s vegan diet killed her child, admit it, end of story, There is no other culprit. Did the parents’ New Age medical beliefs contribute to this child’s death? You bet they did, but remember that Veganism is part and parcel of the parents new age belief system. The reason the child died is a combination of the mother’s Veganism, combined with both parents slavish devotion to a patently left wing, ultra-green or hippie life style while all the time demonstrating a total disregard for their child’s welfare. In other words a Vegan diet killed the infant and the parents conspired to let it die. Smear you lipstick on that pig if you can.
All you vegans who are saying it wasn’t the diet … didn’t you even read the article? An autopsy was performed on this child and there were severe nutritional deficiencies found in this exclusively breastfed baby!
Yes, the child was neglected while ill and didn’t get proper medical care, but even if this baby had lived, charges likely would have been filed or at the very least, the child removed from the home. A vegan eating, breastfeeding mother so crazed with the idea that veganism is somehow “healthy” is what caused this tragedy. And all you vegans who think you are healthy – you can thank your meat eating Mother for why you are still breathing. No traditional society EVER survived and reproduced for multiple generations on a vegan diet. E-V-E-R. And a vegan mother with a vegan child doesn’t prove anything. That vegan child must grow up and have children (with a vegan partner whose parents were also vegan) who are healthy and fertile.
The French have free access to health care. One would guess that the child showed symptoms of debilitation such as weight loss, listlessness, etc. They should have taken him to a doctor. They are at fault.
When are we going to start blaming autism on a mother’s diet? Seriously, diets are complex and everyone should be addressing what the implications of our own dietary choices. Vilifying people isn’t helpful.
There are plenty of children with serious health problems which could have a lot to do with the mother’s diet. Conversations and education about dietary choices are important. Although people interpret health and diet in different ways, these are topics that are beneficial to be addressed. Whether you eat: burgers, pizza and soda; raw food, juice and seaweed; or local produce and grass fed beef — it is quite possible that some nutrient/s is/are missing. Being aware and proactive in promoting healthy dietary habits to children is integral — inutero and beyond. Instead of attacking each other, why not try to understand all side?
Regarding the events mentioned in this article: Sad. Pure neglect from parents who should have known better. I’m guessing that many parents don’t realize their legal obligations to caring for a human with special needs such as a ‘baby’.
My opinion:
Parents may have objections to eating meat/dairy (be it moral or health driven) but those objections should not be assumed to be the best route for their children. I realize many parents may not want to consider this difference to be true but if the baby/child is not thriving then they need to consider the needs of the other as opposed to the needs of themselves, if they do not its Selfish.
My wife and I were strict vegans for near nine years straight and wanted desperately to have a baby of our own, so we dropped the vegan diet, started eating meat and through IVF had ourselves a baby girl (last year).
How horrible and tragic. I can’t see the sentence of 5 years as being the right punishment for them. They must feel so much guilt and self-hatred…imprisoning them will just destroy them. I am upset that they didn’t take their baby to see a pediatrician regularly. Poor family.
Vegans are very set in their ways and they will ignore health for their veganism. So because of their purposeful irresponsibility they are being imprisoned. Most vegans get away with it and they do it all the time with everything that they do. In my opinion all vegans should be put in prison.
I don’t think the parents should be charged. I think they are suffering enough. There are to many facts that are not in this article. as for what the diet of the parents that is not for us to judge. it also does not say if they were trying to give the child any other foods or vitamins. so people butt out.
this is bogus, if you read the actual news article, you’ll see that it was because of pneumonia and NEGLECT of the parents. it’s true that the deficiency MAY be in part because of recent diet change but that could be because the parents NEGLECTED to make sure they had a balanced diet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/29/vegans-trial-death-baby-breast-milk
“Daquo said they had a mistrust of traditional medicine and preferred to treat their children’s complaints with advice from books.
“The couple did not follow the doctor’s advice to take the baby to hospital when they went for her nine-month checkup and found she was suffering from bronchitis and was losing weight,” he said. Instead they treated her with cabbage poultices, mustard and camphor and washed her with earth and clay instead of giving her baths, the court heard.
Daquo said the couple had been reading “the wrong things at the wrong moment”. “They preferred to use recipes [treatment] based on clay or cabbage poultices that they got from their books,” he said.”
do your research, don’t believe this garbage. how can you sit there and tell me with a straight face that the american diet – astronomical levels of heart disease, child obesity, child diabetes – is so much better?
idiots.
Typical fucking liberal dumbasses. So fucking engrossed with their ultra trendy diet that they couldn’t even tell their child was sick or in the process of dying. Parents should be jailed for the next decade with hard labor. This is unacceptable, parents most likely never even took their kid in for a follow up at three or six months to a doctor.