Vegan Diet From Birth = Disaster

Breastfeeding is best for babies. Everybody agrees on that.

Despite a few fanatics that screech about the subject, not every mother can breastfeed. A variety of physical ailments can prevent breastfeeding. Mothers of adopted babies have an obvious handicap.

For those mothers, a baby formula can be a literal lifesaver. Formulas come in all varieties these days. Milk-based; milk-based but lactose free; soy-based; hydrolyzed-protein based; and more. There's one for every type of problem and every type of baby.

Occasionally we hear of parents who are too ignorant, too poor, or just too cut off from the rest of the world who don't understand this. I've given out warnings for years that soy milk, for example, is no substitute for a soy-based formula. Babies need a variety of nutrients that exist is best form in breastmilk and come very close to being duplicated in properly formulated (hence the name) formulas.

But this report out of Glasgow, Scotland, knocks the breath from my body. For sheer idiocy and neglect it's world class abuse.

A girl of 12 brought up by her parents on a strict vegan diet has been admitted to hospital with a degenerative bone condition said to have left her with the spine of an 80-year-old....

The youngster, fed on a strict meat- and dairy-free diet from birth, is being treated at the city’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. She is said to have a severe form of rickets and to have suffered a number of fractured bones. The condition is caused by a lack of vitamin D, which is needed to absorb calcium and is found in liver, oily fish and dairy produce.

Dr Faisal Ahmed, the consultant treating the child, said he believed the dangers of forcing children to follow a strict vegan diet needed to be highlighted. “Something like this needs publicity,” he said.

The report, by Mark Macaskill in the TimesOnline, says that the parents were not ignorant or illiterate or obeying the dictates of a religious cult. It's worse than that.

[The parents] are understood to be well-known figures in Glasgow’s vegan community: “We shouldn't name and shame. Mum feels guilty about the whole thing and feels bad about it.”

Feels bad about it! No, I feel bad about it. Mum should be in jail.

Vegan parents can be as responsible as any other kind of parents. But some vegans have veered off the road of sanity.

Professor Tom Sanders, head of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, warned that while most vegan parents give their children vitamin and mineral supplements, there was a core of hardliners putting their children’s health at risk.

He said: “Some of them think we’re still monkeys that can live on fruit and nuts.”

This is sheer insanity. And those in the vegan movement should be the first to speak out against it.