Posted on 06/11/2008 10:38:39 AM PDT by Dawnsblood
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.
Doctors are under pressure to report the couple, from Glasgow, to police and social workers amid concerns her health and welfare may have been neglected in pursuit of their beliefs.
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. However, he refused to blame the parents, who 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.”
Jonathan Sher, head of policy at Children in Scotland, said: “If the consequence of parental behaviour is physical, mental or emotional harm to a child, then the child protection system should become involved.” Bill Aitken, justice spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, added: “If the youngster is coming to clinical harm, something must be done.”
In 2001, British vegans Hazmik and Garabet Manuelyan, from Staines, were sentenced to three years’ community rehabilitation after they admitted starving daughter Arenai, 10 months, to death. She had been fed nothing but breast milk, raw fruit, vegetables and nuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Excellent analysis, and I agree completely.
There must have been something else going on here.
A baby could easily thrive on breast milk alone for ten months. I suspect it was lack of breast milk that harmed this child.
Does that include Vegans ?
You can't murder Vegans. So you'd have to wait until they die of natural courses, and generally eating animals that have already died is a very bad idea.
What I see out here in the 'burbs is Mom became a "trendy" vegetarian and the kids follows suit to be like Mom. But kid only really eats high sugar crap diet. Kid gets fat.
You're supposed to drink a Guinness to get your milk to let down. I couldn't face it, but Belhaven Scottish Ale worked just as well!
Do vegans object to stout or ale? And if so, why?
Trendy mom isn't planning meals properly. The reason vegans often seem like they're practicing a religion is that planning their meals takes up so much of their time.
“I presume you know the difference between raising an obese child and starving a child.”
Websters unabridged:
starve: to die or perish from lack of food or nourishment.
Vegan : a vegetarian who omits all animal products from the diet.
You must learn the difference between eating patterns and starving
Well, yeah, you’d have to. I eat meat and I doubt I get enough protein everyday.
You cited the lexical definition. Good. You can read.
Starvation also has a stipulated definition that involves the process of starving to death. Rickets is easily avoidable if you feed a child what we know to be a well balanced diet.
But it looks like you spent the day rebuilding your little straw man. I hope you didn't get any splinters. Maybe you didn't know what you were doing, so I'll explain it for you.
This issue has nothing to do with the parents wanting a healthy diet for their child. There are alternatives to the commonly accepted healthy diet (the four food groups, ever hear of them?). Veganism is a quasi-religious devotion, it is a moral choice, not a health choice when an entire community is formed around it.
But you chose instead to trot out the old, tired drone about obese American children. Well, Rennes, the issue wasn't obese American children until you erected that little straw child. You then began to pick that straw child apart by saying that the parents of the ‘starving’ child were perhaps ‘misguided,’ that they just wanted a healthy diet for their child. Well, you are wrong. They were forcing their religion on a child, most likely knowing they were going against the learning of centuries. And we can assume that they knew what they were doing, because to be a vegan requires a lot of research into what you eat.
You defended them by calling them ‘misguided,’ which is a defense of the moral-relativist Left.
I chastise them and believe they should be shamed just as those parents in Appalachia who force their children to play with rattle snakes based upon the line from scripture that says neither the serpent's bite nor fire will harm you if you have faith, who then say that the child must not have ‘had the spirit’ when they are bitten. Both types of adults are guilty of child abuse, if you ask me, and they both deserve to be shamed.
But hey, if you want to defend two parents who caused their little girl to have the skeletal degradation of an 80 year old, that's your ‘misguided’ understanding of what is happening with these diet fundamentalists.
“This issue has nothing to do with the parents wanting a healthy diet for their child. There are alternatives to the commonly accepted healthy diet (the four food groups, ever hear of them?).”
It is precisely the four food groups paradigm that has resulted in the obesity epidemic, and other degenerative conditions in the West. We have the best medical system in th world, it is oft pronounced. Unfortunatley, best here equates with technology, which does not produce health, it produces ex post facto health management. I won’t bother you with actuarial ansd epidemiological data; you can google that yourself and see our many dismal rankings.
I chastise and shame those parents who allow obesity in their children much more than I would those who attempt an alternative to the “commonly accepted healthy diet”. Those who aquiesce to medical and food orthodoxy do so mostly out of ignorance.
I liken them to the blind followers of Obama. They so want to believe what they hear, just as those parents that stock their fridges with Fruit Loops and Coca Cola believe they are providing food. It’s so much easier to choose the path of least resisitance, and avoid the risks of challenging the status quo.
Pathetic.
Ok, a personal question: this is not a joke, and I would like an honest answer: how many medications do you take?
Dude, do you NOT see that an obese child can still become healthy, but the child in this news article — which is STILL the subject of the conversation, NOT the straw man you keep rebuilding — is ruined for life? A child in Florida was starved — to death — by one of these insane diets.
Why in the hell would you hold the parents of an obese child up for more shame than those who are literally destroying the bodies of their children?
Did you ever consider that maybe your definition of ‘healthy’ is of a funadamentalist/Nazi narrowness? Being overweight is not necessarily a death sentence. And America is “obese” according to a federal definition. A few years ago nearly every adult male suddenly became 10% more overweight. I looked into it to find out how this could be. It turns out that the feds changed the acceptable weight category by 10 pounds. Voila, Americans are more overweight.
Are there overweight children? There sure are. Are there healthy, non-overweight children? There sure are. Either of these are far better than the child from this news article who has the spine of an 80 year old.
By the way, your question about meds is also pathetic. Now let me ask you, how long have you been starving your brain of the nutrients it needs to function properly with one of these 'alternative' diets?
“Why in the hell would you hold the parents of an obese child up for more shame than those who are literally destroying the bodies of their children?”
That’s your problem. You don’t see the similarity. One’s effects are immediate, the other slow but damaging over a longer time. And obesity is obviously more pervasive. And the cause of both is ignorance.
I am impressed though by your not taking meds; most Americans are on some, in spite of their “healthy diets”.
Where do you get these whacked-out statements?
I don't know of any adults that are on any type of medication, except one who is diabetic and a couple in their 90s.
By the way it was reported this week that the life-expectancy of we terribly obese, unhealthy Americans just increased. It was higher, and is even higher now, than many those nations who practice those ‘alternative’ diets you alluded to.
More than half of Americans on chronic meds
Blood pressure, cholesterol drugs are most widely used, new study shows
updated 6:36 a.m. MT, Wed., May. 14, 2008
“TRENTON, N.J. - For the first time, it appears that more than half of all Americans are taking prescription medicines regularly for chronic health problems, a study shows.
The most widely used drugs are those to lower high blood pressure and cholesterol — problems often linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
The numbers were gathered last year by Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages prescription benefits for about one in five Americans.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24603120
I would proffer that if Mr. Russert had less of the “four food groups” and more “alternative diet” he would still be with us.
Life Expectancy rank
List by the CIA World Factbook (2007 estimates)
Countries above the US:
1 Andorra
2 Macau ( PRC)
3 Japan
4 San Marino
4 Singapore
6 Hong Kong ( PRC)
7 Gibraltar ( UK)[4]
8 Sweden
9 Australia
10 Switzerland
11 France (metropolitan)
12 Guernsey ( UK)
13 Iceland
14 Canada
15 Cayman Islands ( UK)
16 Italy
17 Monaco
18 Liechtenstein
19 Spain
19 Norway
19 Israel
22 Jersey ( UK)
23 Faroe Islands ( Denmark)
24 Greece
25 Austria
26 U.S. Virgin Islands ( US)
27 Malta
28 Netherlands
29 Luxembourg
30 Montserrat ( UK)
31 New Zealand
32 Germany
33 Belgium
34 Guam ( US)
34 Saint Pierre and Miquelon ( France)
36 United Kingdom
36 European Union
38 Finland
39 Isle of Man ( UK)
40 Jordan
41 Puerto Rico ( US)
42 Bosnia and Herzegovina
43 Bermuda ( UK)
44 Saint Helena ( UK)
45 United States
Virtually all effects of obesity are reversible. A truly morbidly obese child might develop diabetes and be set up for heart or blood pressure problems down the road.
But the vast majority of overweight kids can slim down through diet and exercise and suffer no lasting effects, even if they were fat for years.
The harm to this child is irreversible and severe. Probably has heart and lung damage as well (the next step after muscle wasting).
So no, there's no comparison between this kid and your purported "epidemic of obesity" - which is largely a creation of the government and the media anyhow.
Rule No. 2: view statistics from a drug company with a skewed sample and an interest in the outcome, with skepticism.
Rule No. 3: the United States is not homogenous, and general statistics tell you very little.
It's also important to note that heart problems and high blood pressure are largely hereditary and only exacerbated in some cases by obesity. You can be 10 pounds underweight and still have 'the high blood', or you can be 100 pounds overweight and perk along with 120/80 (with good genes).
I lost almost 40 pounds over the past year, and my blood pressure never changed (it was low to begin with - runs in the family. I was never as high as 120/80 except when I was pregnant.)
“But the vast majority of overweight kids can slim down through diet and exercise and suffer no lasting effects, even if they were fat for years...”epidemic of obesity” - which is largely a creation of the government and the media anyhow”
Well let’s just load up our kids on more Big Gulps, Coke,
Twinkies and Fruit Loops. No harm will come! It’s all reversible! Damn the gov’t obesity propoganda! And we might as well stop exercising too and produce more video games!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.