Toddler taken away from her vegan parents; extreme malnutrition

So reading the comments some vegans don't even believe in breastfeeding?

Babies DON’T need animal fats to grow. There are soy-based formulas. And most vegans are fine with breast-feeding. These parents are just sick fucks.

According to the article, babies need dairy to grow strong teeth and bones. I believe the kid was eating soy.

The parents are stupid, cult members.

Agreed R2, babies need fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals to grow. It doesn't matter where they come from. These people were just abusing their kid.

Rice-milk?

What is that? Rice-washing water?

[quote]Why can't vegans understand babies need animal fat to grow?

I don't condone veganism or any other restrictive diet, but that's bullshit OP. It's perfectly possible to raise a healthy human on a vegan diet. These parents were just morons/psychos.

No it isn't R7

Poor baby. Starving, how painful.

I am vegetarian and I feed my cat and dog meat. Cats must eat meat or they will die. Dogs don't do well without meat. And is seems cruel to not feed them what they are primed to want.

If you won't feed your baby, dog or cat meat don't have kids and don't get dogs/cats. Get a bunny or a goat.

R6, rice milk sounds like it would be horchata, no?

[quote]So reading the comments some vegans don't even believe in breastfeeding?

You can't eat cum either.

Everyone knows babies need fresh blood to survive.

....

It makes sense R13. Kraft can't call their "Singles" cheese. Thanks for the post

Oh no, every single vegan fraus is determined to prove"them" wrong, that babies can be raised healthy "cruelty-free." Talk any sense to them, they scream: " you'll see."

There are thousands of years of vegetarian Buddhists in China, Korea, and Japan to prove them wrong. (Hindus in India are also vegetarian, but use a lot of dairy products). Those East Asian cultures don't drink cows milk. But if you're not drinking cows' milk and eating meat and eggs, you need to know, for your child's sake, the amount of protein (meat equivalency) in soy, peanuts, all the different types of beans,peas, and lentils, and whole grains. You also need to find out how much in the ways of fats and oils you need to feed a child to make up for the fat he/she is not getting from dairy products and meats. Without this research and knowledge, you're going to starve a child to death, which apparently these parents came close to.

There's a science to eating vegetarian and vegan and thriving, especially if you come from a culture such as ours. Most Americans have not been raised on meatless diets, so may assume that if they eat a diet of corn chips, toasted oats and water, they are going to get all their nutritional needs met.

R16 were talking about vegans not vegetarians, big difference.

Yes, and I mentioned both in my post, but vegans can still live long healthy lives with adequate nutrition. They just need to know some science about nutrition. There is only ONE nutrient that vegan diets lack, and that is vitamin B12. There is always talk about whether or not that vitamin exists in some bacterially fermented products, such as miso, but if I were vegan, I would take a supplement. (B12 can be synthesized). The vast majority of our primate ancestors were completely vegan, and most other hominids still roaming the earth are substantially vegan. (However, most ingest insects, accidentally or on purpose). Meat is a very recent addition to the human diet, and cows' milk even more recent.

East Asian Buddhists are de facto vegans, since they don't drink cows' milk or eat eggs:

"In China, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and their respective diaspora communities, monks and nuns are expected to abstain from meat and, traditionally, eggs and dairy, in addition to the fetid vegetables" (this was from Wikipedia).

Let's be honest. Most people aren't going to get as educated as you'd need to about this to pull it off. Children shouldn't be some crunchy moron's guinea pig.

R2 here. I think people are overlooking the baby’s age and extremely poor condition. From newborn to almost a year virtually all nutrition comes from formula or breast milk, or some combination. So it should have been no problem at all to feed the child a vegan formula up until it’s first birthday. The baby’s condition at 18 months indicates willful abuse, not poor dietary choices. It’s obvious they weren’t going regularly scheduled well baby check ups either. I’m guessing no vaccinations, either.

I don’t see why you couldn’t raise a healthy vegan child, but you would have to be very vigilant and educated once they were weaned.

It wasn't THAT recent. We started eating meat about 2.6M years ago, and it was the first major evolutionary change to human diets. We're far beyond the kind of dietary requirements of our primate ancestors.

[quote]Killing animals and eating meat have been significant components of human evolution that had a synergistic relationship with other key attributes that have made us human, with larger brains, smaller guts, bipedalism and language. Larger brains benefited from consuming high-quality proteins in meat-containing diets, and, in turn, hunting and killing of large animals, butchering of carcasses and sharing of meat have inevitably contributed to the evolution of human intelligence in general and to the development of language and of capacities for planning, cooperation and socializing in particular. Even if the trade-off between smaller guts and larger brains has not been as strong as is claimed by the expensive-tissue hypothesis, there is no doubt that the human digestive tract has clearly evolved for omnivory, not for purely plant-based diets. And the role of scavenging, and later hunting, in the evolution of bipedalism and the mastery of endurance running cannot be underestimated, and neither can the impact of planned, coordinated hunting on non-verbal communication and the evolution of language.

Link for my quote in R22 is here:

Vegans are frequently navel gazers and frequently have forms of OCD. The child was considered a designer accessory of their belief in mastery over themselves and the world. Its not dissimilar to religious fundamentalists, anti-vaxers, or crazy cult people. They believe their own bullshit and don't respect the civil and biological rights of their spawn.

r22 interesting articles, but not definitive in my opinion. Even the most pro-meat sources agree that raising meat for food creates major environmental problems. With the modern science now available, fully adequate protein can be made from vegetable sources, and those should be our primary sources, with meat as a "condiment" for those who desire it. There's now clear evidence that too much meat in the diet creates many health problems - circulatory diseases, digestive diseases, kidney and liver diseases, certain cancers. When the body digests food, all proteins are immediately broken down into component amino acids and reassembled into the building blocks our bodies need to create our own proteins. In other words, in the minds of many people, a beef portion is digested into something resembling that beef on us (human flesh, human muscle) and that's what they want to visualize happening. However, that's not the way it works at all. The beef is broken down via digestive juices and other digestive processes into histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine and then all the waste products we can't use are dumped into our excreting organs. The EXACT same thing happens if we eat soy, wheat, lentils, or any other vegetable matter.

I'm a meat eater myself, so I'm not arguing for pure vegetarianism on some philosophical ground, but I limit my meat intake to perhaps 5 meals a week or less, purely for health reasons.

Did your diet make you such a dull windbag?

I had a vegan doctor, who was always pushing veganism. I told her that I ate little meat, but that I'd NEVER follow a vegan diet without a degree in nutrition, as getting adequate protein, vitamins, and minerals out of a vegan diet is so complicated. She said "Well *I* have a degree in nutrition!".

I got a new doctor.