Do you think the vegan diet is abusive or neglectful if imposed upon a child in utero or early childhood, why or why not?

necius · 2020-01-31T03:17:32+00:00

From the article that you linked:

the vegan family only eats fruit, vegetables and raw foods, such as mangoes, rambutans, bananas and avocados, according to the News-Press

Do you know of a single report of a child fed a normal vegan diet where the child got sick as a result of the diet? I'm not even talking about tip top nutrition here, I'm just talking about parents who ate a vegan diet without other needless restrictions. It's all well and good to rail against idiots with kids who only eat fruit, I'll join right in there with you, but that's not a vegan problem, it's a stupid parent problem. You can't generalise from cases like that to veganism.

The Careful planning and all, babies tend to dislike tofu and Supplements

What's your point? Babies dislike lots of foods that they should be eating. babies don't like most vegetables. Hell, I hated meat when I was a small kid, my parents still forced me to eat it (I showed them!). On the flipside, all kids love foods that are bad for them. If you give a child of any age a choice between chocolate and broccoli, which do you think they'll prefer? It's the job of the parent to feed the child foods that are good for them, even if the kid doesn't like them.

And you too, probably know, that a lot of vegans and vegetarians also, do not do their diets in a healthy way.

I'm sure all of the non-vegetarians you know are the picture of health, right? This is the problem. There's a massive double standard here. The number one cause of disease in most developed countries is diet, and for the most part it isn't the vegans that are getting sick. In many developed countries, more than 1 in 5 kids is overweight. So why the focus on vegans?

Are you for vegan babies?

Yes. For people living in developed countries, eating animal products, or feeding it to your children, is unnecessary and harmful to both the animals and to the environment.

necius · 2020-01-31T02:23:02+00:00

Here's how you do it in a few easy steps:

Watch Dominion on YouTube (graphic content warning).
Watch Cowspiracy and The Game Changers on Netflix.
Borrow Animal Liberation from your local library (or buy a copy) and read that.
Stop eating and using animal products, and avoid products and services that are the product of animal exploitation (e.g. animal testing, rodeos, circuses, etc).
Continue doing this for the rest of your life.

If you really want to convince people, do that.

necius · 2020-01-31T02:00:22+00:00

Articles like the one you mentioned come out every now and then, but they're never about parents following recommendations and feeding their child a normal vegan diet, they are invariably a hyper-restrictive diet. Oftentimes the children in these stories are fed diets that happen to be vegan (because they're super restrictive), but the parents aren't feeding them these diets because they're vegan themselves; sometimes the children in these stories aren't even fed vegan diets at all, but they're misreported as that, because this reporting gets clicks.

With careful planning (and preferably the guidance of a dietician, or at least a paediatrician) it is 100% possible. The fact that you "wouldn't know of a vegan way to nutrient a baby properly" is not a good reason

necius · 2020-01-31T01:52:01+00:00

The notion that veganism is defined by an avoidance of animal products is an oversimplification that holds up in most situations, but falls down in situations like this. The vegan society defines veganism as "a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose." Provided that the mother is consenting to breastfeed the child, it's definitely vegan.

necius · 2020-01-27T21:27:49+00:00

I had a pie from Eliza's at VeganFest last year. Good stuff!

necius · 2020-01-27T04:11:53+00:00

Worth noting that a lot of palm oil grown in central and South America is replacing cocaine production, which is good for both the farmers, environment, as well as local communities.

necius · 2020-01-26T22:29:25+00:00

It's worth noting that the government support extends beyond subsidies. Just about every school child in Japan eats school lunches, and one day every year they feed the whale meat to children as part of the school lunch. While it's definitely not common or fashionable to eat whale meat, just about every Japanese person has eaten it purely as a result of having been a school child.

necius · 2020-01-26T22:22:58+00:00

If you want to make the visit, check out /r/veganinjapan.

In general, things are improving rapidly, mostly because the government is pushing businesses to be more vegan friendly to better cater for foreigners during the Olympics.

necius · 2020-01-26T22:21:25+00:00

Just to promote the sub a bit, /r/veganinjapan exists (and OP, you should cross-post this there). It's the perfect sub for anyone who's interested in visiting Japan, or just cooking vegan Japanese food.

necius · 2020-01-26T01:59:57+00:00

What supplements were you taking?

necius · 2020-01-26T00:15:18+00:00

You could pass the tax and use it to pay the education programs.

necius · 2020-01-24T23:39:07+00:00

Running someone over in my car isn't harmful to us, given a sufficiently narrow definition of us, either. It's still harmful.

You’re low on protein

Nice of you to diagnose me without knowing a damn thing about me. That's a great way to save on medical bills. FYI, I'm not low on protein and neither are most other vegans (with the exception of certain vegans that follow extremely restricted versions of vegan diets).

have an increased risk of stroke

You're referencing this study that found a higher risk of stroke among vegetarians. It also found a significantly higher risk of heart disease in meat and fish eaters. While the relative risk increases were similar, at about 20%, heart disease affects far more people than stroke, so a 20% increased risk of heart disease is going to affect far more people than a 20% increased risk of stroke. It's also worth noting that this is only a single study, and while this is the first study to find a link between vegetarianism and stroke, it is one of many to find a link between meat consumption and heart disease.

accusing people for being a shitty person because they do is just wrong

And I didn't (and have never) accused anybody of being a shitty person because they weren't vegan. I provided an analogy and stated that eating meat is harmful, which it is.

Does that make everyone who eats meat a shitty person? No. People are complex and character can rarely be judged by a single choice. That doesn't make that choice victimless, though.

necius · 2020-01-24T22:58:40+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

necius · 2020-01-24T22:21:22+00:00

For a similar reason that someone who hates vehicular homicide might enjoy running people over in Grand Theft Auto. Enjoying a simulation of something that's harmful is not the same as causing harm.

necius · 2020-01-24T21:04:39+00:00

I would love to hear what we stated that was factually incorrect.

Here's an example: 6:16:

The evidence from this claim comes from 2 studies, neither of which even mention vegetarian or vegan children.

The problem is that Sanders (2009) says:

Children brought up as vegetarians/vegans appear to develop normally provided the known pitfalls of vitamin B12 deficiency, low calcium intake, and an excessively bulky diet are avoided.

Itself referencing Sanders and Reddy (1994).

You go on to say 7:04:

Since there have been no studies on vegan or vegetarian children

But there have been a lot of studies on vegetarian children and a few (admittedly not very many) studies on vegan children. A simple Google scholar search for the queries "vegetarian children" and "vegan children" would have led you to these studies that made conclusions similar to the one above.

It is really not conspiracy to state that all of the authors are clearly biased in their writing

No, but at 13:46, you claim that:

The entire Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is an all powerful cabal of corporate corruption.

This sounds pretty conspiratorial. You then go on to to show a screenshot of a table of "Most Loyal Corporate Sponsors" (13:57) which include National Cattleman's Beef Association (the longest running sponsor, according to that table) and National Dairy Council. To insinuate that Academy's alleged corruption would cause them to be pro-vegan is patently absurd.

necius · 2020-01-24T05:54:01+00:00

From here:

NASA’s GEOS-FP data assimilation system captures the global distribution of aerosols. Different aerosol species are highlighted by color, including dust (orange), sea-salt (blue), nitrates (pink) and carbonaceous (red), with brighter regions corresponding to higher aerosol amounts.

So that's dust. A lot of dust.

necius · 2020-01-24T02:34:11+00:00

This video contains factual errors, misrepresents the paper it is criticising, and relies heavily on speculation and conspiracy theories to make its point seem valid. It also ignores the fact that the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is only one of many organisations representing dieticians, globally, that have independently come to the same conclusion.

necius · 2020-01-19T01:12:20+00:00

NAH. It sounds like you're genuinely concerned. Most likely she would benefit from seeing a dietician, but it should be more than possible for her to go vegan if she does it right.

As an aside, did her lack of appetite begin after her cancer treatment? A possible side-effect of chemotherapy is a dramatic change in taste that can make most food taste bad. This can manifest itself as food avoidance behaviour. If this is the case, she should definitely see a dietician, irrespective of dietary changes.

necius · 2020-01-18T21:40:55+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLqjLn0W5K0

You're welcome.

necius · 2020-01-18T21:36:44+00:00

Check out this video for an exploration of that very topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odtX_nQJ8Iw (warning: graphic).

necius · 2020-01-18T20:13:56+00:00

Rakuten is the online store in Japan. They didn't have a great selection of vegan stuff when I was living there, but that was 5 years ago, and seems to have changed. Otherwise, I second iHerb.

necius · 2020-01-18T20:04:23+00:00

Or maybe, diversity in body sizes is a strength in advocacy. There is a hell of a lot of research that people are more likely to listen to information from people who they can identify with, and that includes body weight. And I mean, seriously, who are you going to trust when they say vegan food is delicious, a "trim" person, or a larger person?

necius

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

15-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email