Death By Veganism

From the New York Times (speak of the devil) comes an Op-Ed by Nina Planck about the danger of feeding infants and small children on a vegan diet:

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.

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.

Those who wish to deny children a proper diet should be aware that what may work for an adult may not work for a child who is trying to grow and develop.

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.)

The vegan/animal-rights people remind me quite a bit of the global warming zealots. They are constantly spouting falsehoods and half-truths to try to prove their agenda, no matter what the facts may be. Many of them try to claim that the human digestive system is adapted only for eating plant food. That is utter hogwash. Humans are omnivores and their digestive systems are very different from those of true herbivores such as rabbits or cows.

What's even worse, there are the terrorist groups such as PETA, ELF, and ALF that are trying to force everyone to become a vegetarian.

Hat tip to small dead animals. And to the New York Times, for printing something of use for a change.