This is not intended to be a plant-eater vs. carcass-eater* thread.
Vegetarian couple charged with child abuse. The couple fed their newborn infant ground nuts, fresh-squeezed juices, herbal tea, beans, cod liver oil and flax seed oil; but they did not breast-feed or provide formula.
I can understand not feeding a baby meat (although I am a confirmed carcass-eater), but to withhold breast milk…? WTF?
*[sub]These terms are used in jest. Don’t get upset.[/sub]
I heard about this on the news this morning.
How can people be so well intentioned and yet so misguided all at the same time?
I grew up accross the street from two children that were vegan - they were the sickliest children I’ve ever seen. I’m all for being vegan if your an adult, but little kids need a lot of protein to grow - more than you can get from lentels and tofu I think.
I hope this little girl will be ok.
Hi Johnny L.A. ,
I am a strict vegetarian and this article upset me, too.
First of all, this couple is not representative of the vegetarians with whom I am acquainted. We veggies tend to be a group who is extremely well-informed on matters of nutrition, especially when it concerns the welfare of children.
The article tended to focus on the “strict vegetarian” aspect of this couple’s lifestyle, blaming their vegetarianism for the nutritional neglect of this poor child.
Since when is cod liver oil vegetarian?
Sick. If you’re going to be vegetarian, or vegan or whatever, at least be informed about it, and find out the risks if you want to impose it on children, or pets! That’s one of my issues with the vegetarians/vegans who go out of their way to “preach” what they are doing - half the time they don’t know the facts, and the rest of the time what they “know” is only half right, or less. Now, I’m not accusing ALL vegetarians/vegans of being like this, but I’m thinking in particular of the group at my school that feel that they can get their point across by showing lab research videos from the 50s - things have changed a little since then! :rolleyes:
The poor child. I know families who have children with developmental difficulties due to things out of their control. It’s difficult enough for them. I can’t imagine knowing that you and your ignorance caused your child to have these difficulties.
aaarrrrgggghhhh!! Sometimes I hate the world for allowing this kind of stuff to happen 
Now let me get this straight. Did they withhold breast milk (I prefer the term human milk, btw, so as to be more in line with how we refer to other milks) because it was an animal product?
OMG. My babies weighed that much when they were BORN.
This goes way beyond vegetarianism, obviously. Even if you believed you were doing the right thing by putting a baby on a vegan diet, a wise, in-touch-with-reality parent would realize that something was wrong when the baby fails to gain weight, etc. (A wise parent wouldn’t try such a thing anyway, but still…)
I wonder if there is more to the story…if they were just downright neglectful and are blaming their vegan lifestyle as a sort of cop-out?
Poor baby.
Would a strict vegan mother have more trouble producing breast milk than an omnivorous mother?
What happened between November when autorities were alerted and April when the arrests were made?
Spooky: I did not mean to imply that the couple was representative of vegetarians. I don’t think the article meant to either, but I can only speak for myself.
I can eat vegetarian food or not. (Last night I made spaghetti with “meat substitute” in the sauce.) People can eat what they like, eh? But it seems odd to me that people would put their pets on vegetarian diets (when obviously cats and dogs aren’t engineered for such a thing) and that someone would not give breast milk to their baby.
Anyway, I didn’t mean for this thread to be a rant; just MPSIMS.
There was a couple here in Charleston that just got their children back after a case like this. The parents belonged to a particular Muslim sect that only ate various kinds of fruit and grains, IIRC. If I can find the article, I will link to it, but this sect that they belong to has very strict dietary rules, and they were not allowed to eat meat and various other processed items. They had 5 kids, I think, and all of the children were malnourished and underweight. The children were taken to the hospital where they were checked out and put on a special diet. I believe they lived with foster parents for a while. The parents had to attend parenting classes and a nutrition class. Since the children were returned to the parents, they have added fish and chicken to the children’s now modified diets.
I was shocked to hear that they had raised 5 kids like this. I realize that not everyone learns about good nutrition and the value of a balanced meal in health class, but come on. I think that if I had a lot of religious dietary restrictions, I would make a special effort to find out how to follow my religion while still making sure my kids got a proper meal.
One other thing: while the children were in the hospital, they were served a diet that included pork sausage. Correct me if I’m wrong, (and I’ve been known to be) but most Muslims don’t eat pork, right? Doesn’t this kind of blow their whole ‘dietary restrictions’ right out of the water?
I still contend that this was a poorly written and researched article.
Since when is cod liver oil vegetarian?
(By the way, Johnny , I do understand that you had no agenda in posting the original message. As soon as I read the article on ABC.com I wanted to discuss it here, but I checked to see if anyone else had mentioned it first. I saw that you had beat me to it, so I joined the discussion.)
We are raising my son vegetarian (not vegan) and he is very healthy. These people are nuts.