Children needs them some meat! Lotsa meat or they'll DIE!

[Ignis]

Some parents don't have a good understanding of nutrition. Everybody PANIC! :scared:

One morning over breakfast, Holly Paige looked at her daughter and realised things weren't right. Lizzie should have been flourishing. Instead, her cheeks were pinched, she was small for her age, and although she had skinny arms and legs, her belly was big and swollen. When Lizzie smiled, Paige suddenly noticed her upper front teeth were pitted with holes.

When she took Lizzie and Bertie to her health visitor, she didn't seem too concerned. "She said they were in the low percentile, but thought they were OK," says Paige. "Yet I knew the children weren't growing. I could sense that there was something wrong. It felt wrong."

Finally, Paige stumbled across the answer in an old vitamin book. Although she has no medical confirmation, she believes the family had symptoms of vitamin D- and protein-deficiency. "I felt like such an idiot. I got the information from a book I'd had sitting around on my shelf for 20 years."

(here's the one bit of balance in the whole article...)

Many dieticians believe it is possible to bring up a healthy vegan child. "You can do it, but you do have to make sure you know what you are doing, especially in regards to weight," says Jackie Lowdon from the British Dietician Association. "As with any self-restricting diet, you need to get proper professional advice."

-- http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/healthy-living/how-our-vegan-diet-made-us-ill-848322.html

I don't know what to say, other than that apparently some parents don't realize that the UK only receives sufficient sunlight (for your Vitamin D needs) 1/3 of the year!

Veganism isn't the problem here; idiotic parents are!

[LeftyMom]

1. There's a big problem with that article conflating raw and vegan diets.

It's very difficult to get enough calories into a child on a raw diet, especially while maintaining enough variety.

Raising kids vegan is actually really easy, provided you're reasonably informed about vegan nutrition.

Oh hold on, I should post my credentials:



edit: Oh dear, the article talks about complete/incomplete proteins and protein combining. That particular bit of nonsense was outdated before I was born!

[Ignis]

2. Yup. There's a quick blurb about the diff in the opening paras...

It's not well stated, and it's not made clear that the mom in the article didn't understand the caloric and nutritional needs of her children.

But hey, it's SO much easier just to blame their health problems on a lack of animal protein! :eyes:

[LeftyMom]

3. Further, it's not clear they had any health problems.

The health visitor (I'm thinking that's a visiting nurse?) said they looked fine, but Mom thought they looked unhealthy, changed their diet, and decided they were cured. If they'd been deficient in Vitamin D, they should have been tested, which would confirm that, and if they were protein deficient (which is pretty much unheard of in healthy people who get enough calories) there would be obvious physical signs anybody with medical training would notice.

Honestly, it sounds like Mom is more than a touch neurotic, with all the self-diagnosis and wild swings in diet.

[Ignis]

4. Yes, that's the point where I wrote the mom off as a loon.

When she took Lizzie and Bertie to her health visitor, she didn't seem too concerned. "She said they were in the low percentile, but thought they were OK," says Paige. "Yet I knew the children weren't growing. I could sense that there was something wrong. It felt wrong."

Why let trained medical professionals assess your child's health when you can just trust your gut?

:banghead:

This woman belongs on the Colbert Report.