A strict vegan diet makes children ill?

spen666

How a strict vegan diet made my children ill

By Angus Watson

Holly Paige couldn't understand why her children, Bertie, then four, and Lizzie, three, were looking so drawn and skinny, yet their stomachs were full.


Then when Lizzie smiled at her one day, Holly was horrified to see that her top row of teeth were brown and full of cavities.


'I couldn't work out what was going on,' says Holly, who lives in Totnes, Devon. 'We all ate exceptionally healthily, with plenty of vegetables, nuts and seeds.'


The problem was that this was all the Paiges ate. They had a strict vegan diet, and ate only raw food.


From the day they were weaned, Bertie and Lizzie had never eaten meat, fish or dairy foods - except a slice of raw goat's cheese once a month.


'I'd heard about the raw food diet through a friend and thought it sounded like a really healthy thing to do,' says Holly, 45.


'I was assured by the people who devised the diet that we would get all the protein we needed from nuts and seeds, and we also took a daily supplement to replace the nutrients found in animal foods.


'We also ate pulses, grains and soya; I thought we were on the most nutritious diet possible.


'But then I started noticing that something wasn't right. The children were wearing clothes two sizes smaller than they should have been. I have two older children and they never had growth problems or tooth decay. Bertie and Lizzie's muscles seemed weak and they had problems seeing at night.


'When we went to the supermarket, Lizzie would grab a pack of butter and start gnawing on it. I couldn't understand why this well-fed child was behaving like this. I was so brainwashed that the fact our bodies were craving dairy products had passed me by.'


Holly referred to a vitamin book, where she discovered the children's symptoms were a sign of serious protein and vitamin D deficiency.


'I had let malnutrition in through the back door in the name of health,' she recalls now with horror.


She immediately introduced dairy into their diet, and says the change in the children's health has been 'remarkable'.


Alarmingly, Holly's is a far from unique case. Earlier this month, Glasgow's Royal Hospital for Sick Children reported a 12-year-old girl with a severe form of rickets.


Her parents, 'well-known figures in Glasgow's vegan community', had unwittingly starved her of necessary nutrients found in fish and meat, causing her to develop the bone-wasting disease usually associated with 19thcentury slums.


A Trading Standards study into nursery food recently found that many nurseries were feeding toddlers a diet too high in fruit and vegetables, and too low in calories and fats, putting them at risk of nutritional deficiencies.



'There's so much health information that parents are confused,' says the Mail's nutritionist, Jane Clarke.


'They think it's best to take what they think are "bad things" out of their child's diet, but often denying children meat, milk or wheat can do more harm than good.'


Jessica Hatfield discovered this for herself when her nine-year-old son Max, a previously active, sporty child, became increasingly run down. Some days he had no energy at all and couldn't get out of bed.


To Jessica's surprise, her GP referred Max to a child nutritionist. 'I couldn't understand it - he'd always eaten so healthily,' she says.


She was even more astonished when the nutritionist said his supposedly 'healthy' diet - no carbohydrates and only meat, fish, and salad - wasn't giving him enough energy to fuel his active life.


As Judy More, the nutritionist who saw Max, explains: 'Once his diet was described to me, it was obvious why he had no energy. Children need a constant supply of energy, especially if they're doing sport, and the quickest way is carbs.


'His mother's mistake was to follow a fad diet, hyped up by magazines and endorsed by celebrities, to a growing child.'


Furthermore, forcing a child to go dairy-free so young, without replacing calcium, also risks giving them bad teeth and poor bone growth and osteoporosis. Since bone-building stops in our early 20s, weak bones in our teens mean weak bones for life.


Red meat is another worry for parents after a recent World Cancer Research Fund report linked processed red meat to cancer.


Some mothers have removed all red meat from their children's diet, without replacing its vital iron. This is potentially harmful because children need iron for brain development and physical growth.


Too much fibre is another problem created by some fussy parents. Jane Clarke recalls: 'A miserable little boy was brought to me with constant diarrhoea.


His parents, who were feeding him almost exclusively on bread and vegetables, couldn't see what could be wrong. He got better as soon as we switched to a lower fibre diet.


'Because fibre absorbs water, it's like a sponge inside the stomach. Since a child's stomach is so small, it's easy for food to fill them up before they eat other nutritious foodstuffs such as protein and fats, which are essential for energy and helping them grow.'


Too many wholegrains


She says it's important not to give pre-school children in particular too much wholegrain food. The irony is that later in life, once free of their dietary strictures, these 'healthily' skinny children are at risk of obesity, says paediatric health and exercise specialist Dr Caroline Dodd, of Northumbria University.


'An American study found that restricting children's access to snacks leads to more snacking later in life.


'It's particularly true of young girls. By making sweets and crisps taboo, they become all the more attractive.'


Everyone agrees the solution is simple: don't treat children as adults and subject them to faddy diets or crazy exercise regimes.


Although dieticians are seeing more children harmed by over-fussy parents, Jane Clarke is optimistic the numbers will soon decline: 'The pseudo-science on ridiculous TV programmes is beginning to be exposed, and sensible advice from properly qualified people is beginning to prevail.'


For Holly's children, the good news is that their early lack of dairy seems to have caused no long-term damage. 'Bertie and Lizzie are now the correct size for their age and their rotten milk teeth are being replaced by healthy, white ones. I'm so relieved.

'What I realise now is that the raw food movement is actually a cult - these people will do anything to explain away the fact that for some people, this diet can have very damaging health consequences.


'I'm a very maternal person and can't believe I was so misguided as to risk my children's health.'

Not sayig I agree with this article, but sure to spark some debate.


Is it the case perhaps that a vegan diet should only be undertaken by aduls?

Big Red S

spen666 wrote:

How a strict vegan diet made my children ill
we also took a daily supplement to replace the nutrients found in animal foods.
....
Holly referred to a vitamin book, where she discovered the children's symptoms were a sign of serious protein and vitamin D deficiency.

Either one of those statements can be correct, but not both.

'When we went to the supermarket, Lizzie would grab a pack of butter and start gnawing on it.

I find it incredibly hard to believe this.

I would be interested in the original source of this, if you've got it. My brother's a particularly evangelising vegan...

nicklouse

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... n-ill.html ?

Big Red S

I did wonder why he hadn't posted the source

nicklouse

there is an earlier on in the independent from the 17th june. so the mail is a week late.

nwallace

Big Red S wrote:

'When we went to the supermarket, Lizzie would grab a pack of butter and start gnawing on it.

I find it incredibly hard to believe this.

What is it that makes some pregnant women decide that Coal is a good source for making up the extra nutrients they need?

bet there is something written in the human brain after years of Carnivorism that says if your short of this then this will help.

Well that's my excuse when I raid sweet shops during insomnia induced hypos.

k-dog

'When we went to the supermarket, Lizzie would grab a pack of butter and start gnawing on it.

I find it incredibly hard to believe this.

My kids do that - not at the supermarket or anything but if we have butter out they'll often try to take a spoonful - kids at that age (3ish) crave fatty foods as they need it for development.

flattythehurdler

My 2 year old seems to crave codeine given that I got up the other morning and found him standing in the bathroom sink (having presumably climbed from potty onto bath edge and across into sink) with the bathroom cabinet open and an opened childproof bottle of codeine. :shock: :shock: :shock:
My wife is a hospital consultant. You can imagine how that might have gone down. :shock:

graham_g

Bawlocks. Idiotic parents who do little to educate themselves on nutrition make kids ill; not balanced vegan diets. Stick the V word in and the media are interested - it wouldn't make the papers if it was 'bowl of cocoa pops three times daily makes kids ill?'

jethro924

Must be true if it was in the Daily Mail, personally never heard such sh!te in all me days.

Milk is designed to help newborn / young mammals put on weight quickly etc. If you want to give your five year old milk, well breast feed the little b*gger (and see what reaction you get). I think the only good to come from Maggie's reign was the removal of state milk from the classroom.

BTW I am not a vegan

passout

I can believe it (but that doesn't mean it's true). I've met some pastey unhealthy pastey looking vegans in my time but maybe veganism attracts pastey unhealthy looking types? It would certainly tie in with ethnic print long skirts & sandals. What do you think?

geoffnelder

I've been vegan for 30 years but I do take a vegan mulitivit to ensure B12 . I get enough vit D from sunlight - even in cloudy UK - from cycling or hiking outdoors for at least an hour a day. I could believe the articlle in spite of it being in the Daily Wail (even if it hadn't also been in the Indie) because some people are idiots. I think I would have noticed if my kids had started to lose weight and other deficiency problems. If they really had been eating a balanced vegan diet there should be less malnutrition problems than if they'd had a high fat red meat salt sugar McDonalds diet.

Interesting that in spite of thousands of children and adults who are malnourished and have dietary illness, you don't see headlines like: non-vegan diet make me ill. Even if that would be true.

Geoff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnr-135u84c

idaviesmoore

Big Red S wrote:

spen666 wrote:

How a strict vegan diet made my children ill
we also took a daily supplement to replace the nutrients found in animal foods.
....
Holly referred to a vitamin book, where she discovered the children's symptoms were a sign of serious protein and vitamin D deficiency.

Either one of those statements can be correct, but not both.


Not necessarilly. Just because they're taking a specific supplement dosn't mean that their body's are absorbing it correctly, or at all. So even though they are taking supplements the kids may, for some reason, not be efficiently processing it. Also, there are some pretty poor quality specimens of supplement out on the shelves at the moment.

geoffnelder

True, Author idaviesmoore (hey, where in N.Wales are you? I can often be found cycling over Horseshoe Pass from my off-Wales base in Chester)

Ironcially, a vegan can get all their essential nutrients including vitamins, minerals and proteins from just a meal of beans on toast and orange juice. (using vegan marg with fortified vit D, wholemeal bread) Admittedly it's not raw. You can easily eat enough protein from raw nuts, seeds and veg. B12 is made by bacteria in human gut but is so far down the colon it is largely unavailable. There are vegan communities around the world that don't take supplements and don't get anaemia. It seems their B12 is from soil on root vegetables. B12 is in soya miilk and many processed veggie foods including cornflakes.

Beans on toast is great bike food

Geoff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnr-135u84c

idaviesmoore

Hey Geoff. I'm in Mold area but often hit 'The Bwlch'. If you're planning on going out post a message and I'll meet you up there