How a strict vegan diet made my children ill

By Angus Watson
Last updated at 1:30 PM on 24th June 2008

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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.'


Misguided: Holly Paige with her two children, Bertie (left) and Lizzie



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.


Health information overload


'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.'


Some names have been changed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ldren-ill.html