Vegetarianism - A Form Of Child Abuse

All the nutrients that the body needs other than vitamin B-12 can be obtained from vegetable sources if extreme care is taken. However, the availability of some of them to the body is often adversely affected by the special characteristics of a strictly vegetarian diet (18).

Nutrients so affected include: energy, iron, calcium, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium, riboflavin and the fat soluble vitamins, particularly vitamin D. The best sources of these are meats, poultry and seafood, which are not eaten.

But not only does the vegan diet consist of foods which are poorer sources of these nutrients, it necessarily contains high levels of fiber, phytic acid and oxalate, all of which are known both to bind with the nutrients in such a way as to inhibit their absorption in the gut and also to deplete the body of the minerals it has. The vegetarian ends up with what is called a negative balance. It is a situation where the more he eats, the worse it gets.

This applies both to adults and to children. In the case of children, however, the situation can be far more serious. Children brought up by vegetarian parents are usually breast fed, often for long periods. Where the mother has a good nutrient-rich diet, this is normally a good thing.

But the nutritional condition of the mother affects the nutrients passed in breast milk to the infant. If the mother is deficient in vitamin B-12, for example, this deficiency is passed onto the breast-fed child (19) with unfortunate consequences.

With the more extreme macrobiotic diets the situation is even worse. Serious brain damage is seen in children on macrobiotic diets where it was found that " Vitamin B-12 is sufficiently low as to have psychological consequences that also raise legitimate concerns about neurological development " (20).

Other research confirms the depth of the problem. Mental development of four-to five-year-old children on macrobiotic diets (almost devoid of animal foods and fat) with long-term growth deficits, was studied.

In addition food consumption and behavioral style of the children, and family and parent characteristics were assessed. Children had only seventy percent of the energy and forty percent of the calcium intake of that reported for children on conventional diets. Thirty three percent of the children studied failed to finish IQ tests due to an inability to concentrate (21).

Long standing mild to moderate malnutrition may not affect mental development if the children grow up in a stimulating social environment.

Infants and growing children have relatively small stomachs but large requirements for energy and the proteins and other materials with which to grow. As they can only eat small meals, they, most of all, need a diet high in energy and rich in nutrients - needs that simply cannot be met from a vegetable-based diet.

When weaned, children of vegetarian parents receive a diet where their small stomachs are filled with relatively nutrient-poor foods.

This can lead to grave nutritional disorders such as suppressed growth and nutritional dwarfing (22) , as well as diseases such as kwashiorkor, a protein-calorie deficiency disease usually seen only in severely malnourished African children (23) , vitamin D deficiency rickets (24) , severe iron deficiency anaemia (25) and learning difficulties (26) .

The children of strict vegetarian parents tend to have lower birth weights which studies have shown increase ill-health later in life (27). Smaller babies suffer more heart disease (28), obstructive lung diseases and asthma (29). Under-nutrition in infancy has also been shown to inhibit brain growth and to have a dramatically adverse effect on intellectual development (30).

This last is a disaster as, not only is it irreversible in those children, studies have shown that their eventual offspring also suffer lower intelligence quotients.

Dr. I.F. Roberts, senior registrar at the Department of Child Health, St George’s Hospital in London, and colleagues suggest that these vegetarian type fad diets must be regarded as a form of child abuse 23

Having just answered (32) your other question (23), it seems you are just taking the piss (21). Unfortunately, someone might read what you are saying and be fooled by your amusingly shoddy ‘research’ (45) and make decision made on it. I’m all for free speech, so it’s my duty to inform people that this person should be ignored, as proved by Fatal et al (45).

  1. This is
  2. Where you
  3. Are supposed to
  4. Show your research as supporting evidence.

After making a very simple search i found this page.
mercola.com/fcgi/pf/2002/feb … arian3.htm
Wich that text proberbly came from.

That leads my quest for the references to this page.
mercola.com/2002/feb/2/vegetarian_ref.htm

And i will call you with this writning from the New Zeeland Ministry of Agriculture and Forest, were you can read that even simple forms of vegetarism can lead to negative health effects.
maf.govt.nz/mafnet/rural-nz/ … /httoc.htm

I’m afraid I trust the NZ MAF even less than the UK MAF, or the US FDA or equivalent. They place their own interests, and industries above the public. In a country with that amount of land available for livestock farming, what did you expect? I know for a fact that NZ is very Vegan savvy, loads of restaurants and non-animal based food, some of the best around for all those horrible child abusers, no wait, that’s not right is it?
Nice to see the references, and when I have time I might look though them, although from a quick glance, several are quite dated, and others are seemingly not linked to the article or not published in top journals, but we’ll see.
Dr Joseph Mercola is obviously a pro meat anti anything else. Although it’s nice to see he agrees with Robert Cohen on Aspartame and other anti-milk issues.
For instance he never mentions seaweed sources of DHA in his pro fish oil article.

I think that your disbeliefe in the goverment is unneccesary.
NZ MAF´s money comes from the public and not from the agriculture.
But hey thats your problem.

Talking about child abuse.
I was tipped by a german about a article in Der Spiegel.
I´ve heard about der spiegel before and i think it´s a proper paper.
That article is about two parents how stricly follows some sort of vegan diet. That lead to the death of their 16 or was it 18 months old baby.
Im a bit unsertain. My german isnt that good.
Here´s the link
spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,328416,00.html

Has UK MAF or US FDA publiced anything anti veg since you nemtioned them aswell ? If so, what was that. Just curios.

Has UK MAF or US FDA publiced anything anti veg since you nemtioned >>them aswell ? If so, what was that. Just curios.
I think that your disbeliefe in the goverment is unneccesary.
NZ MAF´s money comes from the public and not from the agriculture.
But hey thats your problem.

I understand where the NZ and UK get their money from, but that isn’t really the issue. The FDA only get money from the government (I think), the problem with the USA, is the government is effectively bribed by their “supporters”, which include big agri business, Milk board, meat etc.
The same is true for the UK and NZ.
It’s not that these government agencies actively speak out, it’s that they don’t speak out when there is a problem with our food.
So far, due to pressure from business, governments have allowed:
Farming practices that allow(ed) BSE to spread.
Farming practices that allow Crohn’s disease, TB, and others to circulate freely in the national dairy herds.
There are others too, but lets deal with them later. The UK refused to admit that BSE was a problem, until it was undeniable. The US still refuses to admit it.
The general public are unaware between the links between milk and disease, largely because too much money would be lost if it became widely known.
From everything I have seen, governments will try to protect business and economy before the health of a nation, every time.
The only thing I trust the government on… that I wont be arrested and slung in jail for airing my voice, unlike say, in China.

The bottom line is this. Here, in Europe, the way we farm and consume food is completely unsustainable. Were it not for the large (and ultimately unsustainable) import of plant food from the Americas (N&S), Europe could not afford to continue feeding its animals, and therefore its massive consumption of animal products.

spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,328416,00.html

Yes, I translated that page in google, it seems they starved their child, and he died of starvation and pneumonia. Weather they followed a vegan diet or not, he wasn’t given the correct food. It said they feed him on coconut milk and tree nut milk (almonds).

Thanks for the rational conversation (meant in all sincerity), often these sites just degenerate into a slagging match.

Sure there are contacs between any agricultureal ministry and the Farmers with their coalitions (what you call milk boards, agri buisness)
But to go so far to calling normal contacs for bribe is a bit to conspiracy.
Okay im not in those legues but however i dont think its reasonble to believe that most agricultureal ministry are bribed. If they were they would force the market and food companies to raise the prices to give more profit to farmers instead of produce (what you call false) evidence wich support animal consumtion.
I really dont think they are false. Do you have anything to support your bribe conspiracy ?

Sure BSE is a problem and no one i denying that, or shouldnt deny it.
However What the UK did was to claim that the meat is safe to eat.
And it is if you eat the right parts, meaning the butcher should not use the parts that could contain bad things, and he should use different sets of knives when cutting near the nerve systems.
Im not afraid to eat meat, not even in UK or USA, as long as its a careful and good butcher.

No farmer want to be struck by any disease, I can promise you that.
Many farmers went under in financial problems after BSE in the UK even after the goverment´s promise to help them. And now most contries if not every one has made it illegal with animalsubstains in feed for cows.
I havent Heard about Crohn Disease, seems like some human disease.
digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/crohns/
and ccfa.org/research/info/aboutcd
What is TB ?

One great problem however is Foot and maul disease ( I think its the right name for it) It´s common in Asia and has rare in Europe.

Oh yea europe is very sustainable at least in an enviromental meaning.
However in a Economical meaning im more uncertain.
Cheap labor and very good soil in east ,improved farming metods in parts in Africa and of course huge land areas of America puts a dangerous pressure on European Farmers.
If only Europeans ate food from Europa then it would be sustainable, but with very low prices abroad there is a problem.
The problem isnt to afford continue feeding the animals, the problem is to find people with sense to pay for good meat with animals that had a good life, with good feed and good care.

That article was the third one ive read about parents not giving their kids what they needed. Sure there must be some problem with the parents but still, They followed a vegan or vegetarian diet.
And its many examples of that it is healthy with some animal content.

Bybo, how do you test the buttcher? :slight_smile:
Did you ever imagined yourself being a butcher?
Cutting the whole day through meat and being carreful at the end of the day? :slight_smile:

I supose there are butchers that love their job and will do everything to be careful… but… hm I don’t really know. :slight_smile:

"Nutrients so affected include: energy, iron, calcium, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium, riboflavin and the fat soluble vitamins, particularly vitamin D. The best sources of these are meats, poultry and seafood, which are not eaten. "

So many holes, where to start?

First, I wasn’t aware the “energy” was a nutrient. What kind of energy are you talking about?

Also, if meat is the best source for a certain nutrient, that doesn’t make it okay to eat. If a carrot has 100% your needed vitamin A, and meat has 1000%, you do not need to eat the meat. More doesn’t mean better.

Meat also has cholesterol (something no plant food contains), more fat, more antibiotics, more carcinogens, etc. than plants.

Just fyi, you actually NEED cholesterol, it’s not like it’s hits horrible toxic substance that will kill you. It just so happens that your body produces the majority of the cholesterol you need. The western concept that eating cholesterol is a primary indicator of heart disease is nonsense.

Those antivegans are so annoying. Naturally plants contain all nutrients which human body needs. In unnatural conditions, where some nutrients are lost, it’s not any better for meat eaters than it is for vegans. Animals in factory farms are fed all kinds of supplements, otherwise they wouldn’t survive. So is veganism unnatural if meat eaters indirectly consume as much supplements as vegans do (or even more)?
Non-veganism is a form of child abuse. When I was 10 or 11 years old and I was a meat eater, I thought of going vegetarian because of ethical reasons. But I didn’t do so because my parents lied to me: they said meat is important to our bodies. Later, I experienced some problems with my heart. I used to feel pain in my heart and sometimes I started feeling weak, even thinking I was going to die. Less than two years ago (when I was 16) after reading some information on the internet, I decided to go vegan. My parents tried to discourage me from doing so, but I didn’t listen to them. A few months later I noticed I had become much healthier. Sometimes I still feel pain in my heart, but it’s not so hard. As the time passed, I kept realizing that more and more my health problems were caused by animal products, but my parents always find stupid reasons, like “sitting in front of computer very long”. That’s bullshit. Drugs are much more harmful than computer.
Also, it sounds stupid when someone says meat has much energy because it causes energy flow. Actually, plants have more energy. If you eat 10 grams of meat, you will hardly feel any energy. If you eat 10 grams of black tea, you will feel awake, restless and full of energy :smiley: