Comments on: Vegan parents who don’t do their job

By: hexalm

hexalm — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:44:22 +0000

It’s obnoxious to hear things like this getting blamed on veganism. Clearly British docs aren’t more educated on nutrition than their American counterparts. Actually, although the UK food agency states that a healthy vegan diet is a good thing, all it says about younger vegetarian children (toddlers) is to feed them cheese, milk and eggs. WTF! As if these things were abundant throughout the whole of human history…

Anyway, if being vegan was inherently problematic, the US at least wouldn’t be fortifying everything with it (since most of the US is below 50 degrees latitude and not vegan). Nor would rickets have been a big problem in the past if a non-vegan diet was sufficient protection from it. Apparently people just like to think that veganism couldn’t possibly be healthy for children…let alone adults.

Info on Vitamin D in the wikipedia article is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_d

The lack of details makes it impossible to comment intelligently on this case though. I sympathize if the parents watched her diet and this still happened–it could be that she has a vitamin D absorption problem.

I’d sympathize if these parents simply didn’t know what was going on, but if there was anything to notice (I suspect it would be) that’d be no excuse for not getting medical attention. Though I could imagine them being told, “feed your daughter milk, cheese and eggs!”

By: hexalm

hexalm — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:12:56 +0000

Just the fact that so much foodstuff is fortified with vitamin D (and the fact that rickets used to be a common problem) pretty much makes it clear that not being vegan doesn’t protect you from this sort of thing.

Wikipedia’s vit D article is pretty well-cited, if anyone wants more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_d

And damn that lack of details…for all we know, they were giving this girl the recommended dose of vitamin D, but she has some intestinal

Granted, it still sounds like neglect to some degree, if not ignorance. I could sympathize with them if they were just ignorant–I wasn’t even diagnosed with muscular dystrophy till I was nearly 18, and that has some fairly visible effects.

So it could well be that they just didn’t realize what was going on or that it was serious, but that really wouldn’t excuse them if they didn’t get her medical attention. Rickets is pretty severe and I think it’d be hard not to recognize that.

And the ridiculous attack on veganism is a good indication that British doctors are as ignorant about nutrition as their American counterparts.

By: Lauren Oujiri

Lauren Oujiri — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:43:43 +0000

Thanks, glad that someone else was outraged at the attack on veganism… I also read the story, which left me with many questions, and pretty furious – the articles I saw were minimally informative, which is dangerous and misleading. Do you know how rare rickets is? It’s really, really hard to get. It often occurs in conjunction with other conditions like celiac disease. What’s the family’s race; rickets tends to occur more in black people because their skin doesn’t absorb sunlight as readily. What other conditions did the child have? If the spine was that bad, what else was going on there? Where’s the in depth context about the family to understand what occurred to cause this tragedy? Sounds like a possible poverty or abuse situation that isn’t necessarily about veganism. There are too many things left out for this article even to have been published. Oh wait, the evening news stories have about as much substance. Silly me, I’m forgetting that’s how things are done. Sorry, sorry. Anyway… It’s really important not to demonize veganism: studies have proven that a well-balanced vegan or vegetarian diet is perfectly fine for children – and babies. And athletes and people of all ages. Do a search, you’ll find it. Remember, perhaps equally importantly, that plenty of meat-eaters neglect their kids’ nutrition, too, which causes dietary and health issues, and even death. And since far more people are meat-eaters than vegans, let’s go after all of them with the same vengeance and disgust, okay? It’s about parents’ abilities to provide adequately for their kids’ needs – it’s not about the veganism (though of course you can be vegan and eat like crap and have poor health – without a doubt.) Sounds more like a case of neglect – for which the parents should be rightly punished if that is the case. That is deplorable and immoral and a few other things in that vein. Also, it was irresponsible for the doctor listed in the articles I read on this to call the vegan diet “dangerous”. Most MDs have little to no nutritional training, let’s remember. All in all, this article did a grave injustice – to the family, the child, vegans, and intelligent people everywhere who expect more facts, context and neutral reporting. (In fairness, I respect the hospital official who would not comment due to the family’s privacy. Better to wait for more real facts and details before crucifying the parents and assuming guilt with a biased story.) Still think veganism is the problem? Two words: Jack LaLane. He’s in his 90s, been vegan for more decades than most people have been alive, and can still run circles around most everyone younger than him. Give him a call and get his opinion on this. But, be forewarned, he’ll probably talk about exercise and ask if the child ever got outside for some fresh air and play – then he’ll ask you that, and chide you if most of your waking hours are spent staring at a screen. Peace.