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
“While I’m not sure I favor charging the parents in this tragedy as it smacks of Big Brother far too much for my comfort level”
Exactly where would you draw the line? If death isn’t the line, what is? Would “Big Brother” get involved when a father sexually molests his son or daughter? What about a mother in an alcoholic rage who beats her child within a inch of his life? What about simple neglect? In your world I guess not …
Why was an 11mth old not eating solids?? It’s been proven that after 6mths babies need more than breast milk can provide!
Wow, they’re sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for being vegan? That’s beyond crazy. How is this even legal. Can a court prove that this mother had knowingly and willfully withheld vital vitamins from her infant, in a way that directly led to the child’s death? If not, then seems to me to be grossly stretching (and overreaching) the law to make clear one’s disdain for veganism and its adherents.
I am a doctor and I am profoundly shocked, not at the death of this baby, but at this unscrupulous and misleading opinion text. I have read about this case, and the cause of death is clearly parental negligence, but not because of a vegan diet. Vegan diets have time and again proven that they are safe and healthy at all ages, including infancy and lactation. For further references, please read the following meta-analysis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
Let’s clear up some facts:
1. This baby should have been started on solid foods at 6 months.
2. Because she was only drinking breastmilk at age 11 months, she was extremely underweight and malnourished. Any baby in this situation, no matter the maternal diet, would be deficient for all sorts of nutrients.
3. At the time of death, the baby had bronchitis and respiratory distress, yet the parents did not bring her to the hospital, trying home remedies instead.
4. When the ambulance arrived, the baby had died of her infection and respiratory failure.
So the cause of death is lower respiratory infection that lead to respiratory failure, with the contribution of malnutrition. All this caused by parental negligence, that has NOTHING to do with veganism.
As a physician, with all the data that is coming out on vegetarian and vegan diets and their positive impact on morbidity (lowering body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and blood sugar) and mortality (lowering cardiovascular deaths, lowering rates of cancer, etc.) – see EPIC-Oxford study and Adventist Health Study 2 for more info – my colleagues and I do not hesitate recommending these diets to our patients. So please be well informed before making bogus statements on a subject that is out of your competency.
I am *SO* happy to see that there’s NO huge generalizations going on in this discussion! (Where’s the rolling eyes emoticon?)
Vegans and vegetarians go through the motions with everything mentally, physically, and spiritually. So everything that is negative about people they concentrate in themselves with the vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. They hide in it public gatherings with other vegans but it’s very apparent with them. In the New Age movement the vegans are a bunch of quacks that BS and go through the motions with everything, which also includes with their professional services. They’re very slow and lazy.
They have made a synthetic dietary cholesterol and to get it’s full benefits you’d have to have 2000mg of it a day because only 50% of it digests. But more research may have to be done on it to find out if it’s cancerous or not. Based on what research has been done it’s very good though and acts just like real cholesterol. I don’t think they’ve made it for people in the general population to buy it yet and the process for maintaining it and putting it into your body is kind complicated. It might also not be cost effective yet. Whole fat milk gives you so many nutrients. Babies from omnivore parents are much healthier. Vegans produce a lot less testosterone and have very weak thyroids (for their thyroids they can get 1/8th a teaspoon of raw kelp granules a day, but if you cook it the iodine amounts absorb too well and it would have too much iodine cooked). Vegans produce a lot less testosterone because of low calorie and not getting in certain fat soluble vitamins and minerals to raise up their natural testosterone. 2 raw brazil nuts a day can help out with testosterone levels, it’s better if you crack them open yourself. Vegans also have much weaker immune systems and get sick a lot more often. Because of the lowered testosterone and weakened endocrine system they get cold a lot, their metabolism lowers, they need way too much sleep when you only need 56 hours of sleep a week which averages out to 8 hours of sleep a night, and they accumulate a lot more free radicals with oxidative stress which greatly ages them, breaks down their bodies, and makes them more prone to cancers and other illnesses. All of the bad cases of vegans are completely ignored so with veganism it’s like communism, even their mindframes are, and so physically and mentally they’re much worse off and spread a lot of propaganda that ignores all of the bad cases. Different types of vegetarianism and veganism can be good for temporary purposes but you’d have to know a lot to properly follow such a plan. They’re focused on all of the wrong things and it’s more about how you look than what you can actually do and accomplish so they’re very lackluster people in every way. It matters both how you look and what you can accomplish. They’re not very reasonable and they lose every argument. They’re also very forceful and will ignore any of the information you provide for them. So people that follow stuff like WAPF are the people that ask questions and want a definite answer to everything. Vegans tend to be atheistic and they become more violent, but very weak at the same time, as hate mobs because the morality part of their brain deteriorates from lack of good fats and good proteins. I’ve heard of vegan hate mobs before and some of history’s most ruthless dictators were vegans and vegetarians. There are still dangerous extremist vegan groups today so veganism causes a mental disease. You can’t count on them at all as people and they’re not dependable. They’re not there physically or emotionally. Vegans are always very selfish and only think about themselves. They may have grown up with more privileges and they don’t take advantage of it but they usually have it a lot easier. If they had to work for anything they wouldn’t be vegan because they wouldn’t have any energy to accomplish anything so they’re usually born with money and have it very easy. Vegans and vegetarians are very lazy and focus on quantity, not quality of their effort.
The way most vegans follow it they don’t get in nearly enough nutrients and they don’t take advantage of even the vegan food sources that they have. Most of them eat too low of calorie for their lifestyle so they have endocrine problems and vegans are known to live a shorter lifespan than most other people. Their hearts get weak so a lot of them die of heart attacks. Veganism doesn’t have any EPA or DHA. They don’t get vitamin D unless they get sun and they don’t get any vitamin K2 MK4 or MK7. People that consume meat get small amounts of vitamin K2 MK4 in the animal source food they consume. Flaxseed (lignans) and soy (isoflavones) are bad for you as they both have two different types of phytoestrogens that are bad for you. A lot of vegan foods are too high in phytoestrogens. Alpha Linolenic Acid is bad for you in higher amounts and it’s conversion to DHA is at a very low amount so you can’t depend on it that well for DHA. Raw vegans have a lot more problems such as protein deficiency and they suck even more physically than most other vegetarians and vegans because they don’t fuel their bodies with cooked complex carbohydrates. They also tend to get a major lack of nutrients and their diets are way too expensive. Eating an omnivore diet can be very cheap. Atleast consume eggs and fish or a cold pressed EPA/DHA supplement. Fermented Codliver Oil/High Vitamin Butter Oil is very good. There is a vegan EPA/DHA supplement available but I don’t know if it’s cold pressed or not. And consume plenty of saturated fat from coconut, palm kernel oil, red palm oil, and macadamia nut oil. There’s also a vegan vitamin D3 supplement made from the lichen plant. Synthetic vitamin A is bad for you and most supplements that carry vitamin A are synthetic sources of vitamin A.
I’ve read enough to come to the conclusion that vegan diets are not natural…and I don’t care to try one. That being said you are wrong on a few things. Vegan diets can contain DHA/EPA because you can get some from some types of seaweed. Or at least you can get DHA.
They also get some EPA from conversion of ALA though its not high from what I’ve read…vegans would probably say its higher….though I haven’t seen any with a good explanation of why its enough…and I’ve read several articles on why eating certain things many vegans do makes the conversion even worse…can’t remember what off the top of my head.
Vitamin K2 MK4 is unavailable ..I think thats right MK7 is really high in fermented soy which some vegans may eat so they can get that if they know about it. Fermented organic soy is actually pretty healthy in appropriate amounts.
Sadly many vegans have their heads buried so far in the sand they ignore the evidence for it not being a healthy diet long term…sigh oh well.
Ok, as a consenting adult you can make your choice to be a vegan. That is just fine. I don’t really care. Don’t bring a helpless child into it. If you supplement Hooray for you. There is formula for a reason. Let you child get all the nutrients they need while you can eat your kale and tofu. I was a vegitarian when I got pregnant, I slowly worked meats into my diet because it was best for baby. I have nothing against vegan lifestyles, but you need to do what is best for your child, even if that means doing something you don’t want to.
It’s probably actually the protein deficiency that caused the baby to die but I can’t say for the B12 and vitamin A. If the mother takes in 85,000IU of beta-carotene which is the recommended upper limit it will convert to 12,750IU of vitamin A in the body. But some people have conversion issues and can only convert 1.5% of beta-carotene into vitamin A in the body. There are vegan foods rich in zinc and iron along with all of the other minerals and are also rich in protein and complex carbohydrates. I’m not sure on this but I think organic food has B12 on it because insects lay their droppings on the produce and the soil which creates B12 for the foods. A vegan would want to get their B12 levels checked though. To be on the safe side a vegan can supplement with vegan source methylcobalamin which is the best type of B12 and maybe the only type that will actually absorb. Methylcobalamin is also the type of B12 that’s in animal sources. Cobalamin and Cyanocobalamin aren’t good for you and they aren’t the sources of B12 that you want. They’re actually bad for you and because they’re imbalance they cause an even higher demand of B12 in the body. I’ve read that spirulina has vitamin B12 in it but I’ve also read it only contains B12 analogues which are incomplete portions of B12 that cause it to pull out the rest of the B12 properties in your body and so it will actually create a B12 deficiency in the body where you’ll have even less B12 in your body because of it. Organic green lentils, organic split-peas, organic barley, organic buckwheat, organic corn, organic bean varieties, and different types of other organic bulk complex carbohydrates sources are rich in protein and minerals but you’ve got to have a lot of it in a day so you’d cook them and consume them. You can find a vegan beta-carotene supplement or you want eat beta-carotene rich foods. There are no plant sources of methylcobalamin except maybe for the organic produce the insects put their droppings on. Commercial produce has pesticides put on them so there are no insect droppings on them. It was found that when vegan East Indians went to Europe they died of a B12 deficiency because their vegan foods didn’t have pesticides put on them while the plant sources in Europe put pesticides on their farming crops. A vegan intake may have some protein but can still be deficient in some important amino acids because they don’t take in enough protein.