The Insufficient Vegan Diet
Vegetarian and Vegan diets are becoming more and more popular by the day. Some would call this trend positive, while many others would call it negative. While I tend to believe that human beings are natural omnivores and should maintain that natural diet, I didn’t see any harm in pursuing the vegetarian or vegan diet. That is until I read this article today in the New York Times. The article is about the dangers that a vegan diet presents to babies. Recently, another baby died as the result of a vegan diet that his parents we administering to him. The baby was six months old and was being fed mainly soy milk and apple juice.
The article is fairly detailed, and I won’t try and explain the concepts the author elaborates on. What I will say is that mothers and future mothers must be more responsible with the diet that their children follow. If you are a vegan, you need to put your beliefs aside in order to raise your child to be healthy. A vegan diet does not contain enough protein to foster a healthy child, and nothing you can supplement will change this. If you read the article, make sure to pay close attention to the benefits of changing to a non-vegan diet during your pregnancy. This is for the good of your child. If you can’t eat a hamburger or a steak for the sake of your child, perhaps you aren’t fit to be a parent.
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This is so true. I read this article, which was very hard to read. It is sad. I stopped being a vegetarian, when I was pregnant. I just could not get what I needed and the baby needed. It can be done, but one has to be very committed and very dispilined.
BTW I think you blog is great. Great content!
Thanks for the compliments! I have no problem with people trying to keep on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but you have to draw the line when it could endanger the health of your child.
The New York Times article you reference is full of factual errors. Please see the letters that were published by the New York Times in response to the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/opinion/l23vegan.html
The first letter is especially relevant:
“I am a nutritionist who testified as an expert witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial of the parents of Crown Shakur. As the lead prosecutor in this case told the jury, this poor infant was not killed by a vegan diet. He was starved to death by parents who did not give him breast milk, soy-based infant formula or enough food of any kind.
“Well-planned vegan diets are healthful for pregnant mothers and their infants, as well as for older children, according to a large body of scientific research. Contrary to Ms. Planck’s assertions, there are healthy plant-based sources of docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA; calcium can be absorbed about as readily from soy milk as from cow’s milk; and soy does not inhibit growth.
“Studies have found that vegan children are within the normal ranges for weight and height, and I personally know vegan mothers and vegan children who are healthier than many of their omnivorous peers.”
I’d like to also mention the following:
The American Academy of Pediatrics says a vegan diet is safe for infants.
The American Dietetic Association says a vegan diet is safe for infants.
Dietitians of Canada says a vegan diet is safe for infants.
The latter two published the following together:
http://www.eatright.org/ada/files/vegnp.pdf
In the above paper The American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada say “Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence.”
First of all, it was an Opinion piece, not an article, written by someone with an agenda. Her web site proves it: http://www.ninaplanck.com/. So don’t fall for this sh*t. The person who wrote it had the facts completely wrong and was simply ranting.
Do your research and you’ll see that major national and international organizations (both government funded and independent) have concluded that the vegan diet is completely safe for all ages–provided you get adequate nutrition, which is actually quite easy to do. You can easily be a healthy vegan, even when you’re pregnant. Even when you’re an infant. For example, the document here:
http://www.eatright.org/ada/files/vegnp.pdf was written by the The American Dietetic Association and the Dietitians of Canada, and in it both state that a vegan diet is completely safe for infants. (FYI: The American Academy of Pediatrics also says a vegan diet is safe for infants.)
Secondly, the child died because it was starved. Period. At six weeks, a child should have been on breast milk or baby formula. There are approved soy formulas out there. Soy milk is NOT acceptable for a six-week old child, and it even says so on the packaging. A diet of cow’s milk and apple juice would have had the exact same reaction–but you wouldn’t see people blaming it on the omnivorous diet. The parent’s were idiots, and the child died a horrible, cruel death because of it.
Thirdly, if you read the facts instead of opinion pieces, you’ll see that everyone in the courtroom, including the jurors, judge, and proscecutors, all agreed that the child’s death had absolutely nothing to do with the vegan diet and everything to do with parents being completely irresponsible. The judge states it best: “They’re not vegans, they’re baby killers.” Also, “Fulton prosecutor Chuck Boring said the verdict isn’t a condemnation of veganism, a strict form of vegetarianism that doesn’t allow the consumption or use of animal products. Instead, jurors believed prosecutors’ assertions that the couple intentionally neglected and underfed the child and then tried to use the lifestyle as a shield.”
If you’re vegan and you want to raise a vegan child, there’s plenty of ways to do it and be healthy. The people were crazy and it’s a terrible tragedy that a loss of life resulted from this, but it had nothing to do with being vegan. It had to do with starving the child and feeding it inappropriate foods. Soy milk and apple juice does not a vegan diet make. Especially for an infant.
Well apparently I stand corrected. Personally, I don’t care enough about the issue to do all this research that you two are speaking of. What I do know is that there are two sides to every issue. I bet I could go out and find just as much research to support that vegan diets are unhealthy for infants. The point was that maybe some people should be better informed before they try rear a child according to uncommon lifestyles. Whether you two are correct or not is unimportant. I’m willing to wager that you are both passionate vegans however. Just like anyone else who is passionate about something, you tend to look at just one side of things.
Here’s an article about a researcher at the USDA who says this diet is harmful for children. Facts are probably wrong.
Weaning onto a vegetarian or vegan diet
With appropriate care, varied vegetarian and vegan diets can provide all the nutrients a baby needs for growth and development. However, such diets can be high in fibre and this may result in low energy intake and interfere with mineral absorption (e.g. iron, zinc, copper). Vegetarian meals should provide protein from a mixture of sources, and vitamin C to aid iron absorption. Supplements of some nutrients (e.g. vitamin B12) may be needed.
— British Nutrition Foundation
Honestly, how many people are familiar with all these sources of vitamins? Beyond the hardcore Vegans, most of the others do it because it is trendy. Are we just going to assume that all vegans are intelligent enough to figure out how to get all these different nutrients in the baby?
…uhm… breast milk for god sakes?
My wife and I are ‘hardcore vegans’ and can personally attest that this is incorrect.
Our son is about to turn 1 year old. He has had nothing but breastmilk and vegan solid foods. He is at least developmentally on par with all the other children his age, and in most cases has surpassed them.
My wife and I have been vegan for close to 4 years. We don’t take any supplements (though she did take iron during the pregnancy just as a precaution). As far as the B12 thing goes, we don’t go out of our way to include it, but it does show up in things like Silk soymilk and yogurt (Silk is fortified with B12, just like most dairy milk has vitamin D).
Our son is happy, healthy if not chubby (not fat tho!). He eats plenty and gets full like everyone else. He’s never had an animal product in his life and it’s up to him to decide whether that will continue to be the case.
Oh, and the sources of vitamins… buy a Vegan recipe book. Almost all of them detail the whole lot of vitamins and minerals with great recommendations as well as comparisons between different foods.
Oh and the notion of apple juice and soymilk… sure, that’s terrible food for a newborn or an infant, and yes, it’s probably worse than cow’s milk, but the reality is, growing babies need human milk. Cow’s main defense mechanism is their size and cow’s milk is formulated to promote that type of growth. Human milk on the other hand stimulates brain development, which just happens to be -our- defense mechanism. One could conjecture that pretty much -any- food -substituted- for human milk is asking for trouble.
…and yes… we get enough protein… and no… we don’t eat fish. =)