To think veganism is not for children?

[ohhhhlivia]

Yes, I am aware that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy vegan diet at any age. I know that.

However, it is more difficult and easier to get wrong if you want to be vegan. It still is restrictive (even with all of the new stuff coming out) as in you need to tell hosts, check menus in advance etc.

It's a barrier that has to be overcome. I don't understand why you would do that to someone who has no choice in the matter.

Lots of kids go through a fussy phase too, add veganism in and surely you're at a high risk of health problems?

I think what I'm getting at, is that childhood nutrition can be hard enough as it is, so it just feels wrong to make it harder for reasons that do not directly benefit the child.

@rufflecrow how do they get the manure on a commercial scale? Usually from cows raised in barns or feed lots, farmers aren’t wandering around wild heathland collecting poop from wild animals....so buying most veg in supermarkets is supporting mass commercial dairy and meat farming. It’s just hidden exploitation you don’t see it. There are vegan organic farming systems using green manures etc or non organic using fertilisers made in industrial processes, the first takes more land as a fallow period is needed and the second is a massive industrial polluting process) And that’s ignoring the massive damage done to the soil health (worms bacteria insects etc by large scale crop farming rather than pasture)

Permaculture is in my opinion the way forward, best for soil heath, best for the planet.

That's how science works, if you make a claim so support it. 'Seriously?' do you not know that?

Your initial point was not limited to the fact that life expectancy has increased.

"Cancers, heart disease, stroke, dementia etc are more common because we live longer thanks to better sanitation, modern medicine and more efficient food production."

I'm asking for a citation for this claim.

Assuming for ine second poiut123 is being serious

UK life expectancy 1900 was 47 for men and 50 for women.

Today it is 79.2 for men and 82.9 for women.

Up until 1800 life expectancy across Europe hovered between 30 and 40, accurate figures are harder to find for the past but it was lower prior to the Victorian era.

Heart disease, cancers, stroke, dementia are all primarily diseases of old age. We see more of them because more of us live to old age. We have to die of something. This is common knowledge.

@really12345 chemical fertilisers mainly. It only tends to be smaller and organic growers who do things the tradtional poop scooping way. Living in an agricultural heartland has taught me much.

Rufflecrow

I am currently a pescatarian who eats limited dairy, I was vegetarian for more than 20 years and vegan for some of that.

I find your approach more likely to turn people off a more plant based diet. If you post clearly inaccurate statements and react flippantly when called out on it, you are not helping promote a positive image of veganism.

TVstar Generally, a brief dictionary entry is not the best source to understand the details of any philosophical or political viewpoint, whether it be veganism, communism, feminism, the thoughts of Plato, or the Chartist movement.

No criticism of lexicographer intended. It is not the job of lexicographers to provide the Cliff Notes of every ideology in a normal dictionary. If you want that, you should buy a Dictionary of Philosophy.

www.vegansociety.com/about-us/history

@RuffleCrow so the Haber process is better for the environment than dairy farming? And data shows that the long term effects on soil health are a disaster? Only 15 harvests left in some places, won’t you think of the worms!

Again poiuyt123 it is well known that improved sanitation cut deaths from diseases such as cholera, that modern medicine cut diseases such as measles, deaths from infections, surgery helped women survive childbirth, that improved farming methods led to an increased supply of food and better diets for the poor, including school dinners.

Sorry, wrong link: www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism

@formerbabe no, is the answer to your much asked question. Babies would not be able to survive without breast milk or a suitable alternative. However, breastfeeding is obviously vegan. Human mothers produce milk for their human babies and willingly give it to them. Cows produce milk for their calves and have it taken away to feed (in the most cases) adult humans who have no business drinking it.

Donor milk is a very common practice, you can Google 'human milk for human babies' and a lot of hospitals have milk banks for the tiny tiny percentage of women who aren't able to breastfeed but want their baby to have the nutrition of breast milk which is unparalleled.

Your argument is the same as people who spend their whole time asking vegans 'but what if you were on a desert island though??' the answer is that most vegan parents (because dad's are vegan too!) would obviously choose to give their child dairy formula if it was the only option they had rather than let their baby die.
But fortunately that is not the world we live in, so is completely irrelevant.

But you derailed the thread for quite a while with that straw man so kudos for that.

I know the levels of important nutrition my daughter is getting each day, which is a lot more than I can say for my omnivore friends with picky toddlers who don't know what they need to supplement or why it's important.

As has been linked here and said time and time again, supplements are required for all children from birth. Vitamin D is the only one needed until 6 months but then it's recommended to supplement other vitamins. If your baby is formula fed you don't need to supplement because the cows milk in formula has already been supplemented (it isn't magically in cows milk - its added in)

To the poster who said 'I've never met a healthy vegan child' - you need to get out more love. 🌱

So much hate and misinformation on this thread, people nitpicking at vegans just to make themselves feel better - it's nasty. I hope my daughter's friends don't have parents like you as she grows up, it would break my heart for her to be exposed to such outdated, uncaring and frankly bullying views.

Can you not just accept that some people choose to live by their values and eat/live differently to you? How dare you assume you know more about the health of the average vegan child than their own parents.

I not a vegan Chaz - whilst we're on the subject of gross inaccuracies! You don't have to be vegan to understand the health benefits of minimising meat and dairy intake. And fish these days given what we've done to the oceans. not envy

What gross inaccuracies? Did I say my diet was healthy? Did I say people should eat more meat or dairy?

Those who are slagging off vegans on here are defending the extremely harmful default western diet without question.
Um, no. I'm well aware that my diet isn't as good as it could be, but the problems in it are to do with fats and sugars, not unprocessed meat.

And @Really12345 collecting the manure of an animal and spreading it to grow vegetables is not 'exploitation' by any stretch of the imagination!
Mn, so would rearing sheep (easier to manage than cattle) solely for their manure not be exploitation? Would the costs of shearing them (of wool that you can't sell, in a vegan system), vetting them, feeding them in dry years or hard winters etc be financially viable. Nope. So where is the manure going to come from?

Ok Chaz, how about I apologise when McDonalds does? K?
Oh seriously. You ballsed up: either you knew these cultures were not vegan but it suited your argument to claim that they were, or you didn't know and hadn't checked. In either case, you have rather trashed your credibility. An apology would at least make you look like an adult.

Arnold, what does that have to do with the initial claim?

I'm not questioning that modern medicine has increased life expectancy.

There is a significant body of academic literature showing the impact of red meat etc on cancers and general health.

I agree @Boshmama. Vegan kids whose parents understand their nutritional needs and adjust diet accordingly are some of the healthiest I've come across. Ominvores simply don't think about nutrition in the same way veganism forces you to. (I've been vegan previously so i've seen it from both perspectives) Of course it's possible to be unhealthy on any type of diet - it's the devil in the detail of what you actually eat that matters.

It only tends to be smaller and organic growers who do things the tradtional poop scooping way. Living in an agricultural heartland has taught me much.
Bollocks!
I live in a rural area and there are times of the year when the district is stunk out by large-scale farmers spreading the muck from their cattle (housed indoors during winter) all over their cereal fields.

They're not going to waste it, are they? Plus they will know it's better for the soil than artificial fertiliser as it contains loads of organic matter.

poiuyt123

This was the intitial claim to which I responded

Scientific studies have proved beyond reasonable doubt that the modern meat and dairy heavy, processed carb based western diet is one of the least healthy of any time or place

This is clearly nonsense. Western diets in the past were vastly less healthy than today, with many people not getting enough food period, many dying of malnutrition. This is well known.

That there may be diets that are marginally more healthy than modern western diets and allow people to live a few years longer is not in dispute, but one of the least healthy of any time or any place is clearly hyperbolic nonsense.

That red meat heavy diets may cause you to develop cancer at 73 rather than 78 is pretty damn trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah mistaking Jains for total vegans is where all the evil in the world lies @GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman. Not grinding up chicks in a blender to make nuggets, or sexually assaulting cows to keep them producing milk, or robbing them of their babies, or keeping chickens in tiny wire cages or feeding children pus- filled milk and shit laced burgers etc etc.

@Really12345

I have quite a bit of empathy with your general position, I can only say that it's about trying to do the best one can and minimising our impact.

Arnold, please do not attribute the posts of others to me - even if they are from other vegans.

I neither know nor care if the other poster is vegan poiuyt123. It was you who demanded citations from me when I posted common knowledge in respect to their hyperbolic claim about modern western diets.

I was merely pointing out the fact that modern western diets are one, amongst several, reasons why our life expectancy has dramatically increased.

Arnold - in terms of diseases related to the obesity epidemic alone this is true. Yes, people are living longer mainly due to advances in modern medicine and the current older generation in the west lived their formative years under rationing where -guess what - meat and dairy and processed sugar were occasional treats and people lived predominantly on vegetables they had grown themselves (dig for victory etc). Hasn't life expectancy begun to plateau in the west anyway for a combination of the factors already stated?

YANBU. My brother has got two little ones and whenever my mum goes over there the older one in particular always says she’s hungry 😥 They’re officially veggie but eat vegan a lot of the time and the food they get given looks so boring. I’ve been known to slip them a couple of custard creams in the past.

RuffleCrow

Rationing improved the diets of many people during the war as balancing of nutrients, as they were understood at the time, was done on a population wide basis. Post war an increase in supplies of meat and a general lkowering of food prices due to better agricultural methods continued that improvement.

No one is arguing that there is an obesity epidemic related to sugar, not meat, consumption. This does not change the fact that modern diets in the west are far better than they were say, in the medieval period, when many people lived on little more than bread. Nor does it change the fact that many people today in poorer parts of the world are subsisting on far poorer diets. It is simply not true that it is anywhere close to being one of the worst diets of any time or place. It is imperfect, but meat and dairy are not the big issues where that imperfection lies, plant based foods are.

sexually assaulting cows to keep them producing milk
I wasn't aware that cattle had a concept of sexual assault.

And what about my other points?
Manure? How farmers actually farm? Sidestepping tricky questions and moving the goalposts ('I got it wrong about Jains but what about THIS?') doesn't persuade anyone that you a) know what you're talking about or b) are right.

FYI, I disagree with the keeping of battery chickens. I've never eaten a nugget made of ground-up chick and I'm not even sure that they exist.

@Boshmama
Can you not just accept that some people choose to live by their values and eat/live differently to you? How dare you assume you know more about the health of the average vegan child than their own parents.
Yup, I can accept that some people want to live differently, I have no problem with that, and I don't assume that a vegan child will be less healthy than an omnivorous one (I work with children, I see plenty who eat shocking omnivorous diets).

But I do object to people talking bollocks, and I also object to vociferous vegans endlessly criticising anyone who eats meat and dairy - trying, in fact, to impose their values on other people. My irritation with this attitude isn't reduced when I find out, as I almost inevitably do, that they know bugger all about farming apart from what they've seen on carefully edited YouTube videos and never have any answers about how one controls agricultural pests so as to preserve a crop long enough to actually harvest it in viable quantities.