Article: Death by Veganism

May 21, 2007

Does anyone have a good rebuttal??

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Death by Veganism

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By NINA PLANCK

Published: May 21, 2007

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.

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Jacob Magraw-Mickelson

This particular calamity — at least the third such conviction of

vegan parents in four years — may be largely due to ignorance. But

it should prompt frank discussion about nutrition.

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded

that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and

nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.

Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally

omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional

vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy and eggs for

complete protein, essential fats and vitamins. There are no vegan

societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the

long run.

Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies.

Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as " first class " (from meat,

fish, eggs and milk) and " second class " (from plants), but today

this is considered denigrating to vegetarians.

The fact remains, though, that humans prefer animal proteins and

fats to cereals and tubers, because they contain all the essential

amino acids needed for life in the right ratio. This is not true of

plant proteins, which are inferior in quantity and quality — even

soy.

A vegan diet may lack vitamin B12, found only in animal foods;

usable vitamins A and D, found in meat, fish, eggs and butter; and

necessary minerals like calcium and zinc. When babies are deprived

of all these nutrients, they will suffer from retarded growth,

rickets and nerve damage.

Responsible vegan parents know that breast milk is ideal. It

contains many necessary components, including cholesterol (which

babies use to make nerve cells) and countless immune and growth

factors. When breastfeeding isn't possible, soy milk and fruit

juice, even in seemingly sufficient quantities, are not safe

substitutes for a quality infant formula.

Yet even a breast-fed baby is at risk. Studies show that vegan

breast milk lacks enough docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, the omega-3

fat found in fatty fish. It is difficult to overstate the importance

of DHA, vital as it is for eye and brain development.

A vegan diet is equally dangerous for weaned babies and toddlers,

who need plenty of protein and calcium. Too often, vegans turn to

soy, which actually inhibits growth and reduces absorption of

protein and minerals. That's why health officials in Britain, Canada

and other countries express caution about soy for babies. (Not here,

though — perhaps because our farm policy is so soy-friendly.)

Historically, diet honored tradition: we ate the foods that our

mothers, and their mothers, ate. Now, your neighbor or sibling may

be a meat-eater or vegetarian, may ferment his foods or eat them

raw. This fragmentation of the American menu reflects admirable

diversity and tolerance, but food is more important than fashion.

Though it's not politically correct to say so, all diets are not

created equal.

An adult who was well-nourished in utero and in infancy may choose

to get by on a vegan diet, but babies are built from protein,

calcium, cholesterol and fish oil. Children fed only plants will not

get the precious things they need to live and grow.

Nina Planck is the author of " Real Food: What to Eat and Why. "

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Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html?

ex=1180411200 & en=824ff7cf05097c16 & ei=5070 & emc=eta1

May 21, 2007

Thanks for posting this, Monika.

I note Ms. Planck has no fancy abbreviations after her name. How does one get

so thoroughly miseducated without even going to school?

This is the ugliest attack on truth I've ever seen. Very sad.

Nora

www.RawSchool.com

May 22, 2007

This article contains many scare tactics and outright lies. I

don't have time to dissect the entire article, but I'll comment on a

couple of things. First off, to say that a vegan pregnancy is

irresponsible is, in my opinion, the height of ignorance. As Sue

correctly pointed out, it depends on the quality of the mother's

diet. A vegan diet can be perfectly healthy for a baby or it can

not, depending on the actual nutrition. " Vegan " is a very broad

term for many different types of diets and foods.

The author of the article says that plant based protein is

inferior. I've never attached any credibility to this argument.

The author sounds like a spokesperson for the meat industry. Last

year I started lifting weights again and was able to gain over 10

pounds of muscle in a few months, on a 100% vegan diet. 14 years

ago, while in college and on a meat eating diet (before I realized

the error of my ways), I was not able to reach the same performance

results. There are many variables involved, but in my experience,

vegetable based protein is healthier and just as effective at

building muscle (if not more so) than meat based protein.

The author then says that vegan diets *may* lack vitamins B12, A and

D. Yes, any diet *may* lack any nutrient if it is not balanced and

healthy. Oh, and let's just tack on calcium and zinc for good

measure. Sloppy journalism at its best here.

The author says that a vegan diet lacks DHA. If she did even a

little bit of research she would know that there are vegan forms of

DHA (through marine algae for example). It took me about 10 seconds

to find vegan products with DHA in them on a Google search.

Whenever someone says a vegan diet is lacking some important

nutritional component, I can always and easily find a vegan product

that satisfies that nutritional need. The arguments against a

vegan diet are like a house of cards.

This article is based on misinformation and ignorance. By

spreading such lies, the author is contributing and supporting the

continuation of a society based on the murder and exploitation of

innocent beings.

May 22, 2007

I think that we all know that you can be completely healthy, (healthier in my

opinion), on a vegan diet and obtain all required nutrients. I think what is

scary about this article is that although we see that these people allowed their

baby to subsist on apple juice (which many Nutritionists call empty sugar water)

and soy milk, and probably didn’t feed the baby breast milk enough through out

the day, what is scary is that if you want the utmost health for your baby and

make the decision to be vegan, if the court system determines the cause of death

for you baby is because the mother is vegan or the baby is vegan you can get

life in prison. So these vegans got life in prison while rapists and murderers

get maybe 20 years. Where is the justice?

I once saw a news story about a couple that went to jail because the court

said that they killed their baby with anti-freeze. It was determined 5 years

later that the baby had a rare disorder in which the body produced chemicals

that were similar in nature to the chemicals in anti-freeze and after 5 years in

jail they were let out.

The mainstream American culture has determined that cow’s milk is important

for babies even though by rational thought only the baby mammal should drink

from its own mother and why humans ever started drinking milk from another

mammal is completely bizarre. Most cultures in the world don’t do this, it is

only Europeans and Americans that do this, Native Americans, Asians, African

Americans, Indians, Polynesians, and many other cultures did not historically

drink from other mammals. As a result most cultures are lactose intolerant and

would get sick if they did eat or drink dairy. It is mostly European Americans

who aren’t lactose intolerant (although many still are) because it has been in

the culture for so long the body has built up a tolerance for it.

And what about parents who overfeed their kids, or feed them junk food devoid

of nutrition and as a result their kids get adult type 2 diabetes which is

hitting kids now so much so that they had to rename adult onset diabetes to type

2 diabetes. Or their children get obese, raising their risk for diseases, or

have severe allergies to dairy which could kill them and are fed dairy anyway.

Shouldn’t these parents go to jail as well?

It is a fact that Americans are the sickest in the world, the most obese,

over-fed yet when someone tries to be anti-American and eat as a conscious being

and have their child be healthier than the mainstream American, they go to jail

for it.

I agree they should have seeked advice of a Nutritionist or a Naturopathic

doctor when their baby didn’t gain weight, but making the statement that they

are getting life in prison because they were vegan will scare many people back

to the mainstream, obese, cancer and other disease causing, environmental,

animal cruel ways of being carnivore. My friend was told by a doctor that if

she didn’t start eating meat she would die. These extreme ways of thinking, and

scare tactics are what has caused wars, bombings, shootings, and it is time that

there is a major shift in the world, both in how we treat animals, our

environment, and each other.

Josh <jjc132 wrote: This article

contains many scare tactics and outright lies. I