Hardcore vegan nearly starves her baby. UL?

General Questions
#1

Last Friday, a friend told me about a vegan who refused to give her baby mothers milk. THe baby was removed from the mother (parents), and was less than half the weight a normal baby at that age would be. This certainly plays up to the image many have toward vegans. Fanatical to the point that they would put there own child in harm because of their beliefs.

But this has “urban legand” written all over it. Why would a vegan oppose mother’s milk? I did not challenge him for a cite. Nothing found on Snopes either.:eek:

#2

Nope, it’s not an urban legend-we had quite a few threads about this, which at the moment, I’m too tired to look up. (Gotta go to bed…nighty night…zzzzz)

Basically, they called themselves “vegan”, but weren’t really-the baby’s diet included cod liver oil.

#3

The father said the reason why they weren’t allowing mother’s milk was that the mom had been smoking marijuana. Then again, he also thought the kid was chubby or something. Search the boards here, we’ve been discussing this recently. Many links were posted in the various threads.

#4

The story is so unbelievable (even if it’s true, which it apparently is) because imagine equating feeding human breast milk to a baby to eating/drinking dairy.

I mean, for gosh sakes, if you’re going to adhere to a philosophy, at least UNDERSTAND WHAT REALLY LIES BEHIND IT.

The mind boggles.

#5

Maybe the one you cite is an UL but there is currently a case here in Australia with two parents charged with manslaughter of their baby. Allegedly they only fed the child rice milk and it died of malnutrition and a related massive thrush infection.

The couple were apparently devotees of natural therapy and traditional medical practices.

Link to the news article from today’s paper:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/13/1021002430788.html

#6

What the moron parents did was wrong. But the hype that came from Fox News headlines was that it’s a “vegan” story, which is a lie. Fox News’s biased, tendentious reporting, heavily skewed to the right wing, is evil and nauseating. Down with Fox News.

#7

And obvious fricken’ loonies.

#8

There are a couple of Pit threads on it, if you want to search for them.

#9

For your reading pleasure…

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=112546
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=112522
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=112501
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=113078

#10

But in this case, the child had a rare form of malnutrition where fluids under the skin made the child appear to be a healthy weight. A doctor who treated the child for something else only about 6 weeks before death didn’t realise that the child was dying of malnutrition.

Two cases so close together are unusual. I was very confused when I saw this story in today’s paper.

#11

Jomo Mojo

I have heard vegan many times related to this story but don’t get fox news - so I suggest you take you rant to the pit.

#12

It is possible to raise a healthy child on a vegan diet, but difficult. There are some vitamins that are difficult to get, and you have to avoid going too heavy on foods high in phytoestrogens. One thing you need to monitor carefully is fat. Kids need fat to develop their brains.

Many looney’s however do raise their kids on diets that are inadequate. They are just more likely to get publicity if they claim to be vegans.

#13

These people tried to supplement the diet by adding vitamins etc. I wonder what was still lacking.

Is it actually possible to raise a healthy baby on a vegan diet where breastmilk is not available? If so what would you have to feed the child to do it?

#14

Commercial soy formula.

#15

The scary thing is that the wife is pregnant right now, and they vowed to raise the new kid the same way. Some people just shouldnt be parents.

#16

Isn’t that high in phytoestrogens, flodnak?

#17

I assume (perhaps incorrectly) there’s a rice milk formula out there somewhere, as rice milk is available for adults.

#18

Is it just me, or do these replies have different width’s to them? I am going drinking now, but when I return I will go to ATMB and ask “WASSUP WIT DAT!!”

#19

In the cite from Cazzle, that’s exactly what caused the child to die. Rice Milk which IIRC from the news states NOT TO BE UED AS INFANT FORMULA (or word to that effect).

#20

ummm… that was my cite actually (not that I’m getting territorial or anything…)

Speaking as a parent of a one year old baby, you are extremely careful of what goes in their mouths. There are literally hundreds of guides out there to what babies should be fed and it is a very easy matter to check out whether or not you should feed your baby a particular product. I had a quick look in some of our guides last night and very quickly found warnings that babies should not be fed rice milk.

Even if you hadn’t read the warnings, all you have to do is read the side of the container and see that rice milk contains virtually no calcium, protein, fats, vitamins or minerals - the basic things that a 5 month old baby needs. Rice milk really only contains carbohydrates (sugars) and very little else. They might as well have been feeding the child sugared water.

Here’s a comparison of real milk to rice milk:
…Cow Milk…Rice Dream
calories…150…120
protein (grams)…8…1
carbohydrate g… …11…30
fat g…8…2
calcium mg. …291…20

Rice dream is a commercially available rice milk which has actually been enriched to some extent. NB: this is a comparison against cow’s milk - baby formula and breast milk would both perform even better against rice milk in such a comparison.

Nobody but a complete moron would neglect to consult a doctor or pedeatrician when moving a baby off breast milk and onto anything other than baby formula. Even when we moved our baby to baby formula we discussed it with the maternal health nurse.

Whether or not there’s a baby formula based on rice milk I don’t know - I’ve bought a lot of baby formula over the last year and I’ve never seen anything like that for sale. There are certainly formulas that are based on soy milk but again they all carry warnings that you should consult a doctor before using.

What I think of parents who would do something so criminally negligent is a matter for another forum.