How the heck can anyone defend the Vegan way of eating as being healthy?



Babies’ Mental Delay Tied to Moms’ Vegan Diet
By Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The breast-fed infants of two mothers who did not eat any animal products, including milk and eggs, developed brain abnormalities as a result of a vitamin-B12 deficiency, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) (CDC) reported Thursday.

The primary sources of vitamin B12, which is essential for brain development, are animal products like meat, dairy products and eggs. Since the mothers ate little or no animal products, too little vitamin B12 was transmitted to their children through breast milk, according to the CDC’s Dr. Maria Elena Jefferds.

Jefferds added that these cases serve as a reminder to parents and pediatricians to ensure that both pregnant women and mothers who breast-feed their infants consume enough B12, either through diet or B12-containing supplements.

“You have to make sure you’re getting it,” she said, in reference to vitamin B12.

And don’t abandon breast-feeding altogether, Jefferds cautioned. Breast-feeding has many advantages, and mothers who choose to not eat animal products should still continue to breast-feed their infants.

“Vegetarians should absolutely breast-feed, there’s no question about that,” she said.

In the January 31st issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Jefferds and her colleagues describe the cases of two babies who showed signs of brain abnormalities as a result of a deficiency in vitamin B12.

In one case, doctors examined and diagnosed the deficiency in a 15-month-old child with slow growth and mental development. Her mother said she had avoided consuming all animal products for many years, and had breast-fed the baby for 8 months after birth.

After receiving supplements of vitamin B12, the child began to improve, but was still below her age group in speech and language at 32 months of age.

Jefferds explained in an interview that many children fully recover from vitamin-B12 deficiencies but that, in some cases, a prolonged period of low consumption of vitamin B12 can cause irreversible damage.

“I think it really depends on how severe the deficiency was, and how long it was taking place for,” she said.

She added that while both children described in the report showed lingering symptoms of low vitamin B12, over time, those impairments may disappear.

The initial symptoms of low vitamin B12 in infants are often vague and not obvious, Jefferds noted. She recommended that doctors keep the possibility of a deficiency “on their radar screen,” and ask mothers if they eat animal products or take supplements that contain enough vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin.

Vegans eat only plant-based foods, using grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables to fill all their dietary needs. Vegetarians, on the other hand, typically avoid meat, but may eat some animal products, such as milk, eggs and possibly fish.

SOURCE: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2003;52:61-64.

You can still be a vegan as long as you take b12 supplements, but I think in no way can the argument be made anymore that the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle is the way humans were meant to be. Even the moral argument against killing and eating animals loses force. Babies with abnormal brains are not meant to be.

Except that there may be other things as well missing in the vegan diet that have not yet been identified that cause problems for babies. It's like baby formula -- they keep "improving" it because they keep identifying new things in human milk that they realize they need to add to baby formula. Babies need breast milk from a mother who eats a balanced diet and a balanced diet for human beings includes animal products.

Interestingly, human milk (at least the milk of humans who eat a diet that includes animal products) is very high in fat and cholesterol and I saw some studies several years ago that showed that children who were nursed by their mothers are less likely to have cholesterol problems in adulthood. (They do have high cholesterol in toddlerhood, but it goes down as they reach adulthood.) The exposure to fat and cholesterol early on may protect them in some way. One of the reasons for the explosion in high cholesterol and heart disease in the past century may be the decrease in the percentage of babies who were breastfed for most of their infancy.

I was lucky enough to have been breast fed..and born away from my darling..but really not good for nutrition grandmother.
Even if my mother wasn't able to breast feed long.. it was better than my sister having to be born down here..
And My grandmother took over taking care of that newborn. feeling her formula's of her making..AND cereal right from the beginning.
I can't help but wonder..if that start up didn't make a difference in her life.
Please don't think that I am telling anyone how to feed their babies!!!
But I can't help but wonder..if the bottle is also a factor with increasing childhood obesity!
Nedra

This experience I'm going to relate to you happened a few years ago when I worked as a newborn intensive care nurse. We had a baby that was born premature, not too early, but was very underweight for it's age. The mother was unwed, vegan, and in general not very responsible, or prepared for the task at hand. Babies generally aren't strong enough to nurse at that age and weight but we will give them pumped mothers milk that is stored from that mother. (mother's milk is not shared, contrary to popular opinion.) Anyway we had to stop giving this baby the mother's milk because she wasn't eating enough fats or protien, even with added calories to the milk(very common practice for premature, and underweight babies until they are close to 5 or 6 lbs and gaining well), the baby was not gaining weight and was actually loosing weight. We kept telling the mother she needed to eat more than carrots (the milk was a bright orange.) or the baby would not get better, and we would have to give it formula designed for premies. Nothing worked, and we had to do it. Her milk was not even good enough to provide the other benefits the baby needed because of the poor nutritional factor in the milk.
Sad, sad case, because that is what is prefered to give babies. Most of the time, mother bodies make exactly what the baby needs at that time, meaning it changes as the baby grows and develops. Studies done at BYU showed that the Mother milk of a premie is much different in composition from that of a full term healthy baby, and the MM of a year old child is pretty much water, with very little nutrient value because most children at that age get there nutrients from other sources.
So perhaps the brain damage from the babies of Vegans is not just from b-12 deficiency but also damage from not enough fat, calories and protien?
Tanya

Just like any way of eating, there are all extremes and people who make up all ends of the spectrum.

I know many vegans who get everything they need nutritionally and quite a few of them who have had healthy, safe pregnancies and children. Actually, I don't know any that have had an unhealthy pregnancy.

We, as low-carbers don't like to be clumped with those who get fanatic and eat only meat and cheese for three meals a day in the name of low-carb eating. And we particularly don't like it when the media prints a story that takes one of these extreme low-carbers and presents them as the majority saying "See? This girl followed low-carb and died from kidney failure. We just proved that all low-carb is unhealthy."

Perhaps vegans and their way of eating is similar and deserves the same respect?

Respect? No.

This is not the first story of this type I've read. There is an ongoing criminal case in my area about some vegans whose toddler died, starved to death, because of their dietary views.

If there were people dropping dead from low carb eating I wouldn't be eating this way, and I would not be reading in this forum. Nor would I be very interested in a way of eating which kept popping up in the news due to the deaths of children.

I do eat this way because I have done a lot of homework on the subject and I'm convinced it's a healthy way to eat. It is not a religious matter to me, but one of science and good sense.

I do respect a person's right to eat anything they want, but not when it is doing dire damage to their children. I'm sorry, but for me, people who worry more about poor little Bambi and Thumper than about their own babies and children do not engender respect.

I wouldn't do Atkins induction level eating if I were nursing any more than I would do a vegan diet while nursing. Atkins himself says that it is okay for nursing mothers to do maintenance, but they should not do any of the other three stage of Atkins. I have no problem with an adult eating a vegan diet -- I would not presume to criticize that choice any more than I would want them to criticize my choice -- I just don't think a strict vegan diet is a good idea for a nursing mother. We don't know enough about the effects of major food groups being eliminated from our diet on our quality of breast milk to take the risk of either following Atkins induction or a vegan diet while nursing or pregnant.

Media stories of people falling dead from eating styles?? Read this link...
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...&threadid=68582

You can't always believe what you read. And you can't judge a society on it's extremists.

BTW... I agree wholeheartedly, Liz, that preg and nursing moms should really watch their nutrients. No matter how they eat.

This seems also to go along with the development of man. I was watching a documentary on TV weeks ago which stated that one of the missing links in mans pregression from ape was by eating the brains of animals killed originally by other animals.
We had developed the capability, at that time, to figure out how to extract the brains, which are high in fat and protein. This developed our brains even further and promoted our growth, not only physically but mentally also.
Interestingly the archeologists can also find evidence of other developing human beings who were bigger than the strain we evolved from. These appeared more physically developed brain cavity was smaller and they were still very ape like in statue and vegetarian. According to this program, this line of developing human died out.

A good article on vegetarianism can be found at http://westonaprice.org/myths_truth...etarianism.html