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Posted to alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian,alt.food.vegan,alt.food.vegan.science,talk.politics.animals
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Daily Mail: How a strict vegan diet made my children ill
On Jun 24, 9:01 pm, Dragonblaze > wrote:
> How a strict vegan diet made my children ill
>
> By Angus Watson
> Last updated at 1:30 PM on 24th June 2008
>
> Comments (11) Add to My Stories
> 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...trict-vegan-di...
http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg...3_ENU_HTML.htm
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