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Vegan ideology trumps health (Soy isn’t all you think it is)
By AngryToxicologist | May 21, 2007
This is truly disturbing. As written by Nina Planck in the NY Times this morning,
WHEN Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty.
I’ve got vegan friends and adults are free to make their own decisions, but when vegans have children, they NEED to understand two things: 1) A vegan diet isn’t natural, our bodies are evolved to eat animals. As Michael Ruhlman so aptly put it: it is “a refusal to admit to our own nature” 2) It is very dangerous for children and infants, even if you breastfeed.
Number 1 always strikes me as odd because vegans frequently care a great deal about nature and preserving it. The fact is that they are doing something quite un-natural. I know that culturally we have moved beyond things that were natural (nakedness, etc), but our bodies are actually biochemically opposed to it, it’s not something that has arrisen culturally. People need to stop pussyfooting around this issue and start talking facts (Many thanks to Ms Planck). Don’t tell me that the ideals behind veganism trump the health of kids. Even if they did make sense to me from a spritual/ethical perspective, it still doesn’t trump the health of kids (and it doesn’t make any sense to me. Especially from a spiritual perspective, if our bodies are made for animal eating - or at the minimum, animal product eating (vegetarian) - how can that be unethical? As the late Pope John Paul II said about God and evolution, “truth can not contradict truth”, and there is truth in nature).
The point I really want to emphicize here, being a toxicologist and all, is that soy isn’t as healthy as its image. In the journal Clinical Nutrtion and Metabolic Care, a review article entitled, “Soy protein for infant feeding“, the author concludes that
Soy protein formulae should no longer be extensively used. They have no nutritional advantages over cow’s milk protein formulae and they may even have some nutritional disadvantages related to their high phytate, aluminium and isoflavone contents.
In a Letter to the Editor in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrtition, the Authors go over the the scientific literature and conclude that:
…in the light of the latest documents, we can conclude that the story of soy-based infant formulas started out with the best of intentions but has now turned distinctly sour. These formulas should no longer be extensively used, at least not in developed countries, where protein of animal origin is not particularly expensive and is widely available.
Why do these authors conclude this? Infants fed soy have worse reactions to vaccinations, have abnormal blood levels of certain estrogenic compounds, and a higer risk of an impaired immune system. Infants that breastfeed from vegan adults don’t get all the nutrients they need for brain development and other functions. It’s not natural or healthy.
What is safe, and even healthy, for adults is not necessarily safe for children, and when soy consists of the large majority of the diet, it can be harmful for anyone.
What I see as the real problem is the fact that we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or impose upon their spiritual beliefs so we stay far away from these facts. Your or my freedoms, however, end where they start effecting someone else’s life. The parents of Crown Shakur have been convicted but we are all partially to blame for creating an environment where we have allowed ideology to trump health. I have no problem with people who choose to be vegan, but I have a problem with them thinking it’s natural, healthy, or that they can impose this on their children.
PS Just thought I should mention that children can thrive quite well on a vegetarian diet including plenty of milk, eggs, cheese, and the like.
Topics: food, Depressing/Infuriating |
May 21st, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Starving your kids is bad. Being vegan has nothing to do with it.
Neither you or Ms. Planck have any training in nutrition, so I guess you can’t be blamed for your ignorance, but it does seem irresponsible to write as though you know what you are talking about.
Stick to toxicology.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Actually, I do have some thank you very much and I would believe that most knowledgable people would consider Nina Planck very educated on the matter as well (http://www.ninaplanck.com/index.php). Additionally, my contention isn’t that all vegans are starving their kids but that it is unhealthy for kids, and in this case did lead to starvation. As the comments seem to have the possibility of getting nasty (and 5 already have on both sides), I’m approving all of them up front, so your post may not make it up right away; an working e-mail will also be required.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I know all about Ms. Planck. She is in the business of selling books based on her idea of ‘real food’. That is fine.
I also know that she does not have nutritional training. That is why I do not enjoy seeing her cited (or her self-promotion) as an ‘expert’. Her op-ed is pathetically uninformed.
Raising healthy children takes attention and care no matter what your philosophy of eating may be.
Linking a tragic death caused by severely deficient parents to veganism is an intellectually dishonest way to make an argument.
I don’t know your background in nutrition, but most toxicologists don’t have one.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Fair enough, regarding Nina, $ can change your outlook, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. But it still stands that as I noted “Infants fed soy have worse reactions to vaccinations, have abnormal blood levels of certain estrogenic compounds, and a higer risk of an impaired immune system. Infants that breastfeed from vegan adults don’t get all the nutrients they need for brain development and other functions.” That’s unhealthy and I don’t see anything to refute that in the scientific literature.
BTW-I’ll agree to your disagreement with one part of Ms Planck’s op-ed, full-term soy-fed infants, for all their other problems do not have a problem putting weight like their vegetarian peers. Pre-term infants who are soy fed do not.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I was confused about something and I just wanted a clarification. When you wrote the following:
“Full-term soy-fed infants, for all their other problems do not have a problem putting weight like their vegetarian peers. Pre-term infants who are soy fed do not.”
Did you meant to refer to soy-fed infants as opposed to vegetarian infants (who do, in this sentence, have trouble putting on weight)? Do vegetarian infants not have trouble putting on weight like full-term soy-fed infants? I wasn’t sure what was meant.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Sorry, there was a lot packed into that sentence. So vegetarian infants means pretty much everyone but soy kids for the first 6-7 months because it’s just milk and then starting grains then veggies at ~4 months. So vegetarian pre-term and full term kids along with full-term soy-fed kids gain weight just fine. Evidence shows that pre-term infants who are only soy-fed (no milk) don’t catch-up with the weight. Hope that’s clear. Even for the full-term infants, though, milk is better (whether it comes from a cow or a non-vegan mother) for the reasons in the main post.
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:11 am
I think vegans in general have a hard time accepting information like this because all to often people attack our dietary choice(s) with ignorance for whatever reason.
I’m not trying to say anything about this piece. High levels of soy isn’t good for anyone, I imagine infants are even more susceptible.
Just make sure if you’re in the US to get some Organic milk as increased levels of IGF-1 (Insulin Growth Factor 1) isn’t good for anyone. In fact I’d argue that once you’re done developing any IGF-1 isn’t good.
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1998Q2/foxbgh.html
An interesting read, esp. in relation to other posts here in regards to where public health sits on the consideration list before things get approved.
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:23 am
Food is one of largest sources of cultural neuroses in this country, and with so much competing information (and this understates the problem somewhat) I think people often feel wholly overwhelmed.
Beyond that, vegetarians (of which I am one) and vegans often do, as the above poster said, find that “people attack our dietary choice(s) with ignorance for whatever reason.” I had lunch at a PoliSci conference in Chicago and a group of graduate students were trying to tell me that it was “unnatural” and unhealthy to be a vegetarian, and one even went so far as to vaguely cite a study that he had heard about connecting vegetarianism to Alzheimers.
This was just after I had returned from a six-week sojourn through India and it was easy for me to counter with that country as an example of a place with millions of vegetarians without an especially large rate of Alzheimers. Obviously, this is a simplistic comparison, but it forced my interlocutor to think a little more closely about his criticisms.
The point about “natural” is similarly dangerous, in my opinion. Lots of what humans do or don’t do could be considered “natural”, but this isn’t necessarily the best guide for our behavior. Is it natural to use a cell phone, for instance? Is it natural to eat beef raised with growth hormones or drink milk with antibiotic residue?
Did humans evolve to eat processed food, for instance, (when 90% of the money spent on food in this country is used to buy processed food)? You will probably agree that the question “is this natural?” just doesn’t seem to apply in this way, and this is probably because it’s more of a tool for rationalizing our attitudes and practices than it is a useful criticism.
Finally, for the other side, I think it’s worth pointing out that as far as parenting is concerned rationality and children’s health should trump ideology. When an infant becomes sick or is not gaining weight properly, then obviously something should be done, including diet changes. I’d be happy to sacrifice all kinds of political choices in order to keep my kids healthy. Ideologues who can’t see that are probably a little too far up the self-righteousness scale to see much else and their comments can probably be safely ignored.
(the 90% statistic comes out of Fast Food Nation)
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:49 am
Those are good points. I think that there is a difference between culturally “natural” and biochemically natural. Using a cell phone is cultural, needing animal protein in some form (cheese, milk, meat) is biochemical. I’d agree that the cultural version is meaningless and sometimes harmful. The biochemical one has real meaning though.
As to the ideology/political choices that you mention, a similar situation actually happened to me. There are things you just have to get over when the larger health of your child is at stake.
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Actually, I would add one other point to that.
Our assumptions about what is biochemically natural are sometimes informed by our assumptions about what is culturally natural, and this forces us to tread carefully anytime the designation is assigned. For instance, I would fully expect to find in the history of scientific literature in India studies about how a vegetarian diet is the most natural. Comparatively, in the United States, the military conducted those old studies on animal versus plant proteins and concluded that animal proteins are preferable (and this was later criticized for the cultural assumptions involved). Whatever the case, I don’t think cultural assumptions are so easily isolated (and I’m sure you’ll probably agree).
This reminds me of a wonderful argument I once encountered in a book about gay marriage called The Trouble with Normal. The author argued at one point that a concern over the term “normal” comes to us mostly in the twentieth century and mostly out of the increasing reliance upon science to tell us what is normal. He also went on from there to argue that even in medicine, the term “normal” comes with a few conflicts because we tend to confuse statistical norms with evaluative norms. Thus, while bad breathe and car accidents are “normal”, they’re not necessarily desirable.
I bring that up because I think it relates to the muddiness surrounding the designation of “natural.”
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Well put. Natural is a really loaded word and means different things to different people. It’s much more accurate to say that some animal food compounds are biologically necessary for a child.
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:49 pm
I agree that ‘natural’ is a cultural thing. But I disagree w/AT saying that soya isn’t natural but implying that cow’s milk is. Cow’s milk is made for calves, not children, we’ve simply forced ourselves to drink it for so long that it’s tolerable. Is that natural?
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1787
In the reading I’ve been able to do in regard to the healthyness of vegan infants/children, it seems as though as long as the mother is healthy the kid will be healthy. If she needs to take B12 or vitamin D supplements to achieve that then so be it. I think most women who are pregant change their diet to some degree. It’s just important to know how you have to tweak it.
http://www.scienzavegetariana.it/rubriche/cong2002/vegcon_infant_diet_en.html
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:54 pm
I’d say that cow’s milk isn’t “natural” either but it’s closer to breast milk than soy is. Breast milk is always best.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Ah, ok. I understand now. I agree cow’s and human milk is more similar than soy (which is also why you should be concerned about the IGF-1 in cows milk). And I agree that Breast milk is always best. I’d be interested in reading your source that was used to formulate, “Infants that breastfeed from vegan adults don’t get all the nutrients they need for brain development and other functions.”
Seems like a bit of a blanket statement (which might account for some of the contention with some readers, {although as your other post illustrates it’s totally ridiculous the way the expressed themselves}). Maybe something along the lines of, vegans who breastfeed have to take special precaution to ensure proper intake of nutrients, brain development and other functions, such has adequate: weight gain, vitamin B12, and Calcium and vitamin D intake etc.
http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj97jan/972preg.htm
I think it’s easier to gain weight and get those nutrients via dairy and eggs, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done another way. But that’s why I’m interested in reading your source maybe vegans can’t.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I just found your blog from a comment you made on another blog. Fascinating.
I agree with you on the vegan issues, btw. The nastiness when veganism is discussed seems to flow largely from that camp. I have never heard an omnivore threaten to come eat a vegan’s vegetable garden in retaliation (ok, lame comparison to to the threats you eat children, but you get my drift).
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 am
Hi,
I don’t buy your points or perspective.
First, that Nina was given an op-ed slot is a significant sad statement. She doesn’t have any meaningful qualifications and proceeds to make confident generalizations. (The other part of the sad statement is how NYT is so op-ed hungry and tends to fill space with literate-sounding but intellectually unsound pieces).
The opening point on the issue of diet is objective and non-subtle. The resource hits associated with meat-eating are huge. Vaclav Smil has some competent assessments on this front. Even NYT had “Meat eating and the planet” last December.
The health points raised by Nina rebutted by in detail at
www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007other/nytimes.html
The larger point is that animal-based diets are strongly and visibly correlated with many diseases. The local hospital sends out a monthly health tip flyer which tends to ratchet its way up to the obvious. The latest issue says that to minimize your chances of getting cancer ‘you don’t have to be a complete vegetarian’.
I have known several parents who raised vegan kids and I don’t know of any health problems. I have read that females will physically mature slower on a plant based diet (as opposed to having females almost fully developed - physically - at 14). I have been vegan for 15 years and can’t think of any down-side. I am very fit and active (resting pulse of 50, body fat of about 5%, total cholesterol perhaps a little over a 100). Plant food is easier to digest and be active with. I think my chances of having heart problems are comparable to my chances of being elected President via spontaneous write-in.
As far as the philosophical point, please. Much of what we take for granted - starting with low murder and rape rates - is a big break from our innate tendencies (particularly, male tendencies). Nina might acquaint herself with a surprisingly prevalent part of our traditional diet - canabalism.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:34 am
AngryConsumer, I forgot to imbed the links. Sorry. The best way to find the research is go to this article and get the references:
http://www.jpgn.org/pt/re/jpgn/fulltext.00005176-199905000-00022.htm;jsessionid=GJCMCz8fL6d1VQt2L528RGvfbhRL2QpnnBqJJ2LyPfpGn4mhBxry!959335381!-949856145!8091!-1
BTW- I don’t actually think that weight is a problem for the vegan children, at least I haven’t seen anything to that effect.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:55 am
Ted,
This has nothing to do with meat eating, as I noted vegetarianism is fine.
There are many fallacies with the rebutal in the link but the larger problem is this: they are based on assumptions about how how the body should do things as opposed to looking at what actually does happen, and in this instance, many times doesn’t happen. For instance, yes you might think that a vegan mother would be able to produce enough DHA, but the simple fact is that if you look at them, they don’t (see link in the comment above). Also, just because other species exist on plants only doesn’t mean this would be healthy (conversely, you could argue that some animals eat only meat in the wild so that should be healthy for us. As we both know, it would not). This is the ’scientificy’ argument that really gets me up in arms; it sounds plausable to a lay person, but it’s way off base. In fact, it’s quite funny that in trying to slam Nina for not knowing what she’s talking about, who ever wrote that rebuttal exposed the fact that he/she doesn’t know what they are talking about.
Lastly, the argument that “I know vegan kids that are healthy” holds no water because 1) they may have a depressed immune system or endocrine problems and you might not notice and 2) even if something is harmful not all are harmfully effected - polluted air doesn’t give everyone asthma (See this post here for why, it’s a standard of industry types trying to uphold their chemicals).
I do appreciate the articulate, non-nasty post, though. Thanks for reading.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Sorry my statement was unclear, what I meant to say is that vegan women who are pregnant need to take special precautions to ensure adequate weight gain.
And I’m sorry, maybe it’s because I’m feeling under the weather, but I still couldn’t find any study that showed vegan breast feeding parents can’t provide enough nutrients.
I did however check out the Nina article and saw where you might have gotten it from. She says, “Insufficient milk is *common in vegan mothers, and vegan breast milk is known to be deficient in DHA, which comes from fish oil.” *My emphasis.
(Just as a side note DHA can also be sourced from algae. http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?n=66482-eau-plus-omega-dha-algae)
A study found that when women increase the level of DHA intake in their diet that it is passed along in their breast milk.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/4/780?ijkey=ab8dce7b7936016d73d712f6be28babf2bf94d15&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Granted this was a fish source. And current forms of DHA from algae can vary (so either read the bottle or take more). But it isn’t implausible for vegans to raise their DHA levels via supplements.
Nina Planck doesn’t seem to be the best source. Here’s a few points of contention I have with her article (from a factual basis, this doesn’t include all of my opinions on comments she made about a vegan diet).
As stated above she states DHA can only come from fish, not true.
“The omnivore has only one real dilemma: which of the many good foods our bodies are designed to eat…” She goes on to list milk. As mentioned in an above post our bodies weren’t ‘designed’ (a bit of a creationist term wouldn’t you say?) we’ve merely evolved at accept it because we’ve forced it so long.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1787
Her main point centers around the fact that the baby’s diet was vegan. While true it didn’t consume any animal products and could be technically considered vegan, it was the parents ignorance, not the diet that killed the child. She says, “A baby fed soy milk and apple juice…” this isn’t even an infant formula, of course the baby isn’t going to get everything it needs, esp. since it wasn’t being breast fed (at least with any regularity). To dovetail that into why a vegan diet “is an aberration in human dietary history.” is the kind of irresponsible reporting you are always commenting on.
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
You may want to try pasting the whole link into the browser manually, it didn’t all get linked when you click on it, and I don’t have access to fix it right now. You can also find it by name, Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology & Nutrition:Volume 28(5)May 1999pp 541-543
The Story of Soy Formula Feeding in Infants: A Road Paved With Good Intentions
I think we can all agree that Nina’s article had a lot of problems (in case people were wondering, no I don’t know her). I don’t believe that veganism would starve babies.
Back to the DHA thing. For me what it comes down to is what actually happens, theoretically, if vegan mothers took x, y, and z, everything would be fine, but in looking at outcomes it’s not happening. I think the best thing to do might be to educate people similar to breast feeding campaigns and say that evidence has shown that vegetarians’ and omnivores’ breast milk is more healthy, but it may help to take x, y, and z. Then just leave it up to the parents.
Interesting point about ‘design’. Evolution bended us this way, it could probably have taken us totally vegan, because those who had the genetic ability to either make the critical nutrients, or go without would survive. Of course, it didn’t.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:06 pm
I agree that the best thing would be to educate people. And I want to thank you for posting this because I’ve learned some things that I will defiantly pass on.
The article link worked for me (it came up w/the same article) and the data is probably right there, but I for some reason am having a hard time finding it. I did do some of my own research and found the DHA levels of vegans at around 60% of what they should be. Is this in line with your numbers? (I’d still like to see them whenever you have time). The weirdest part to me is, how are vegetarians (who supposedly don’t eat meat) having the correct level of DHA? Unless they are the vegetarians that still eat fish, but I wouldn’t consider them vegetarians. So maybe my own interpretation of the word is skewing things a bit. Anything in the methodology that clears that up?
May 24th, 2007 at 9:23 am
As an ex-journalist and Vegan I have to side with Eddie. But not only is the story about the “starving vegan baby” in the newspapers biased and unfair, it shows how far the media (and whomever owns them and they are “owned, including that of the editors) will go to sell newspapers. The prosecuter clearly states that it was the AMOUNT of food, not the type of food or lifestyle that was on trial. Starving kids is wrong; well Duh. As a former hospital worker as well, I have seen children come in from getting violently sick after drinking milk or due to milk allergies. Prior to his death even Dr. Spock recanted his pro-milk position, more info at:
www.notmilk.com
Also in comparison to other omnivores and meat-eaters, actually we are NOT designed to eat meat, Have you ever seen the teeth on a bear or a baboon?(Also Omnivores) Yikes! LOL.
Well I had my say, thanks guys!
Peace Love and Hippy Stuff..
May 24th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Angry Consumer, seeing that you couldn’t find any studies indicating that a vegan parent couldn’t provide their child with enough nutrients, I have found several.
A 1983 article in the American Academy of Family Physicians; American Family Physician titled “Vegetarian Diets” (no link because I used Lexis Nexis) talks about (admittedly) a religious sect of strict vegetarians who “The infants had been exclusively breast fed for three months. Then breast milk was progressively replaced by fruits, vegetables, oats, yeast, and almond or soy milk. Soy milk, which is made by boiling soy flour and brown sugar and utilizing the strained white filtrate, was the single most important constituent of the infants’ diet between three months and one year of age.” out of the 25 babies who were admitted “Three of the infants were dead on arrival at the hospital, and five more died within a few hours of admission.” Babies need cholesterol- it’s necessary for brain development, and vegan diets are deficient in B12. Adults can last for several years while deficient in B12, but it’s necessary for normal baby development, and even a breast fed baby isn’t going to get enough if the mother is vegan as this article: from Pediatrics states
“Vit B12 deficiency in children differs from the adults by etiologic factors, clinical presentation, and radiologic findings. It is common in the infants of the mothers with pernicious anemia, mothers who are malnourished because of low socioeconomic condition or who are on a strict vegan diet.”
While a 1989 American Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatrics 1989; 83: 433-442 article titled: Taurine in Pediatric Nutrition: Review and Update, states “The need for taurine is apparently increased during reproduction. Fetal brain and liver have higher concentrations of this amino acid than mature tissues, [n55] although taurine synthesis by the fetus is limited. It was shown that activities of enzymes of the trans-sulfuration pathway (for the conversion of methionine to cyst(e)ine) are low in the human fetus: indeed, cystathionase is absent. [n94-n96] It also was shown that the human placenta lacks enzymes necessary to produce taurine. [n94] Postweaning consumption of animal protein-containing foods should allow an adequate intake of dietary taurine; however, vegans may obtain inadequate supplies of this amino acid.” The article goes on to say that they tested the taurine concentrations in the breast milk of vegan vs omnivore mothers and discovered this “In their milk analyses they found the taurine concentration of the milk of vegan mothers to be significantly lower than that from mothers who consumed dietary taurine. Despite the lack of preformed taurine from the vegan diet, the mean concentration in milk, albeit low, decreased within the range of values found for omnivorous subjects. In addition, the authors noted that the concentration of taurine in vegan’s milk was still considerably greater than that present in unsupplemented bovine milk-based formulas. In light of the CNS findings in animal models and now in human infants, it would be important to know whether or not vegans in developing countries have the same or lower milk taurine concentrations than those found in Britain.”
The reality is this. We know (in the realm of knowing) very little about our dietary needs, or the beneficial nutrients that certain foods contain. That is to say that nutritionists are in fact working backwards - they look at what healthy human populations eat and try to figure out why it makes them healthy. The vegan diet pre-supposes that we know what makes people healthy and that you can eliminate a key source of nutrients for the entire world’s population, and the complete total of human history (i.e. animal products) and through proper supplementation and careful eating habits remain healthy, and thrive. That is hubris.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Thanks for the comments all. I’m uber-busy and didn’t really have time to closely read them but I’ll do so soon. For now, three things:
1) AngryConsumer, I realized I sent to the wrong link, it’s another italian study that I meant. I’ve got the link around here somewhere but I recall that the number was around half.
2) In a related note, if I find the time, I’m going to try to post a page with a bibliography of studies about veganism and development, so send in full journal refs if you have them (a pubmed ID # included would be fantastic) and we’ll have a mini-vegan-development-wiki.
3) Jana, in comparison to other veggie eaters, actually we are NOT designed to eat veggies, Have you ever seen the teeth on a cow or an elephant?(Also vegans) Yikes!
May 24th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Thanks for the links. While they do reveal some troubling information, I think that the sample size is far to low to be able to discard a vegan diet. Time and again we see the recurring theme that some things effect some people differently than others. One study (http://adc.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/77/2/137?ijkey=c65660c48883e1e2455c39d3d8a7d23755ec4433) looked at only one child, and concluded in the article that, “His two older sisters had no clinical signs of vitamin B-12 deficiency”. (Specifically the 3 year old who would have been born after the mom was already vegan for a year) so based on your argument the mother shouldn’t have been able to have normal children.
I’ve acknowledged that vegans lack certain things in their diet, but don’t understand why supplements can’t be an alternative.
All the articles contradict your assertion that “proper supplementation” wouldn’t enable you to be healthy, when they state that all the children when put on B-12 supplements returned to normal levels.
One says: “The approach to individuals following unusual diets needs to be careful and considerate, aiming at stepwise introduction of small, acceptable additions such as milk products or eggs. If dietary changes are not acceptable to parents, vitamin B-12 supplements are essential.”
If nutritionists are “…working backwards - they look at what healthy human populations eat and try to figure out what makes them healthy.” Why would the professionals in the articles you cited be looking at sick people and trying to discover why they are sick?
I don’t understand what was meant by a vegan diet eliminating the complete total of human history. Perhaps you could clarify that?
May 28th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
When I said that a vegan diet eliminates the complete total of human history, I really meant that it ignores it. Never in the course of human history have people been (willingly) vegan. Why not? Because never in the course of human history have people been able to be vegan - without supplements and a strict attention to diet, they’d die.
Any diet that requires supplementation as the basis of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is suspect. I’m not opposed to vitamins, but vitamins are supposed to be insurance against any deficiencies your diet may have - they should not be acting as the basis of your diet. Why not? Because for every identified nutrient there are countless unidentified ones, that likely perform necessary functions but that since we haven’t identified them we can’t supplement for them. There are also other ones that work in tandem, and ones that without which we might suffer, though we may not notice an ill effect for years later. 60% of children who were given soy formula as children developed normally. 40% developed hypothyroidism. If someone hadn’t stopped to crunch the numbers nobody would have noticed the relationship. Why didn’t the 60% not suffer? Maybe they got large amounts of iodine, which can counteract the negative affects of soy. Maybe they had different genetic dispositions. Who knows. The reality is, however, soy formula and soy products do a number on ones thyroid. In the sources I cited it was clearly identified that B12 was the culprit and they were able to correct for it, but lots of culprits aren’t so easy to identify. I suffered from acne for years, bouncing from dermatologist to dermatologist, until I read that in “primitive societies” where there’s basically no sugar, acne is unheard of. I laid off the sugar and my acne disappeared and I lost weight. Every dermatologist will still tell you, however, that there’s no link between food and acne.
Again, I’m not opposed to any adult being a vegan. What annoys me is when they push the diet on an innocent infant, particularly since, as my first point was, breast milk is not vegan, no more than cows milk coming from a vegan cow is vegan (FYI even the mostly vegetarian cow will eat small rodents when presented the opportunity and is suffering from certain nutritional deficiencies).
As for my statement regarding nutritionists, I think I was unclear. You’re right in a certain respect that doctor’s are working backwards to figure out what makes a person sick. Which is why doctors (and nutritionists) aren’t the greatest at figuring out what causes long term illnesses (i.e. heart disease, cancer etc. Yes there are risk factors,but they still don’t know what causes one person to get these diseases and not another person with the same risk sets). The difference, however, is that when a person is sick, if you screw up the risk is negligible - i.e. they very well may have died anyway. But when you’re postulating what makes a person healthy, you very much risk taking a healthy person and making them sick. Which is what the FDA has basically done to the American public over the past 30 years. You can say what you will about food, but the truth is, if you look at the bulk of the research what it boils down to is this: those people who eat a wide array of whole foods (including animal products,i.e. eggs and dairy) live the longest, healthiest lives. It’s not sexy, you can’t package it. But it’s true. When you start introducing large amounts of sugar, when you start inserting processed foods, or even large amounts of processed grains populations get sick.
As for the vegan mother, we can and do store B12 in our bodies. This is why many people can be vegan for a number of years and not suffer the affects of B12 deficiency, even without regular supplementation. Being vegan for a number of years, and having 2 preceding kids probably dropped her B12 to a critical level which is why her last baby suffered and none of her preceding children did (they got enough off of her stored amount). In essence her previous years eating animal products probably spared them.
Lastly the vegetarian mothers could have gotten B12 from eggs and dairy products. It’s found reliably in both.
July 2nd, 2007 at 12:32 pm
[…] with the vegan post, people seem to be mis-reading the point of the post which is the majority of the work out there […]
July 18th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
late to the party here, but just wanted to chime in about whether it was natural or not for humans to drink cow’s milk. If by “not natural” you mean that cow’s milk is not made for us but for calves, well, I can’t think of any animal or plant product that is made for us to eat - did rice evolve with the purpose of feeding people?
If by “not natural”, you mean we didn’t evolve mechanisms to handle it, well, that’s not quite true either - see here.
I think drinking cow’s milk is just as natural as eating carrots or chicken.
July 18th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
An excellent point!
November 30th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
This is nonsense. I’m not a vegan, but I know enough to recognize ideologically motivated hooey when I see it. No, humans don’t “require” meat. We haven’t “evolved” to eat meat. Eating meat is simply one dietary choice — and, if *real* dietitians are to be believed, not even a very healthy choice at that.
If this couple had fed their baby only cow’s milk and apple juice, it would have starved to death just as surely. Any idiot knows that a six week old baby needs more than just milk — soy or cow, and any fool knows better than to feed a baby that young sugary apple juice.
I think you ought to stick to a subject that you are either more knowledgeable in, or else less ideologically motivated by. Incidentally, much of the world’s population does not eat meat (most of India, China…), so you are not only factually incorrect, you are ethnocentric.
November 30th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Just to clarify: Any idiot knows that a baby needs more than just milk — cow’s or soy — and apple juice. It needs human milk, or if that’s not possible, then a very good formula. But to blame this baby’s death on veganism is, as someone above put it, “intellectually dishonest.” Indeed, this entire article may as well be meat industry propaganda. Ridiculous. This is junk science in the most flagrant manner.
This baby starved to death because it was not getting the nutrients it needed. And a diet of only cow’s milk and apple juice would have been just as deficient as soy milk and apple juice, and if you’re really a scientist (which I am beginning to doubt) and not just a propagandist, then you would know this. So, you are either a propagandist who chooses to ignore the facts, or you are ignorant of the facts. Either way, I will take my advice elsewhere. Not from “experts” like you. Thanks anyway.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:12 am
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May 8th, 2008 at 4:16 am
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