Vegan girl

Remove all ads!

Drew,

A cow very probably does not contemplate/resent it's confinement pen, nor it's iron deficient diet. A cow very probably does not mourn the loss of her child nor resent the quality of her accomodations or the frequency of her impregnations or the perpetuation of her lactation. Cows are very probably primitive enough that they absolutely could not care less if they could turn around or not. You are very probably lamenting a victimless injustice. You are defending a rootless foodstuff.

Until a cow learns sign language like Koko the gorilla and speaks ill or her plight I will continue to eat beef stew and not worry about her mindset or accomodations.

 

This is entirely beside the point, given the context in which I made my statement. The larger point I was making is that vegans don't avoid animal products simply because they come from animals. They avoid them because they don't approve of the manner in which such products are acquired. A good many vegans would cease to be vegan if the industry changed enough of its practices (personally, if industry practice were to change to something I felt was sufficiently humane I would cease to be vegan, but would remain a vegetarian).

Regarding your statement about Iron deficiency, anemia is no laughing matter regardless of your species. Not all cows are on iron deficient diets. Only veal cows (dairy calves that aren't disemboweled after birth for the rennet in their fourth stomachs are sold to the veal industry) are purposely subjected to iron deficiency, confinement so close they can't even turn around, and light deprivation, all of which leaves them so weak and undernourished that their muscles atrophy to a point at which veal calves aren't even capable of standing, which is the goal. The low iron count and muscle atrophy give veal its distinctive taste (the light deprivation lowers their D vitamin levels, which is also supposed to affect the flavor). You may think that this is perfectly fine, and that's your prerogative, but vegans do not agree.

 

Child abuse. Make an example of the parents. Nothing to be said about, or to talk it wright.

 

That would be fine long as we also make an example of the (legion) parents of children who develop type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, melanoma, and (if the parents smoke) lung cancer, emphysema, asthma...

 

At least those kids get to enjoy their burgers. This girl was forced to graze AND she got ill - that is just unkind.

 

Forced? Not hardly. Most vegetarian children stay that way their whole lives. If they were only doing it because someone forced them, they would stop being vegetarian any time their parents weren't watching and they certainly wouldn't carry it into adulthood.

 

Drew, to the points that they severely impact the child's health, I completely agree with you. Realize, though, that not all of these are solely dietary problems.

Also, being a little chubby and suffering from extreme obesity are very different things, yet a lot of health nuts would group them together nonetheless.

 

I'm sorry drew but most of the vegans/vegetarians i've met treat it like a religion & indoctrinate their children just as bad as any cult. Your defense of this couple solely because they are vegans is bordering on the same. Someone mentions that they should be tried for child abuse & you respond by stating that we need to "make an example" of all the parents that allow their children to develop whatever ailments. We are talking about 1 documented case of legitimate abuse as this child will never get better not a bunch of hypothetical cases were they might get better. You are just making excuses for them & you are better than that. Stop & think about it for a minute.

 

Or any religion. Parents indoctrinate their children into their religion (or their lack of it), value system, dietary habits, mode of dress, social patterns, and even their political party as a matter of course. We call it child rearing. Veganism, by the way, is not a religion. It is a philosophy.

No such defense has been made, especially not just because the parents were vegan. I already agreed that the mal-nourishment was their fault. My disagreement was with the idea that the parents are sanctimonious nut-jobs who were too busy patting themselves on the back to notice there was something wrong with their child, since we have no information (other than the fact that the parents are vegan, which appears to be enough for some) that would indicate that the parents are sanctimonious, crazy, unaware that there was a problem (we do know that they were unaware of the exact nature of the problem), or that they didn't seek help.

Actually, someone suggested that we "make an example" of these parents. My suggestion was that, if we "make an example" of these particular parents, we must also "make an example" of all the other parents who's children have become sick, injured, or killed as a result of parental incompetence or negligence. It's called being fair. If we only "make an example" of these particular parents while letting all the non-vegan parents of malnourished children get off scott-free, that would constitute discrimination.

 

Thats why i don't think religion should be taught to children.
You are a parent & i'm fairly certain you have read up on the subject of rickets. If your child was exhibiting these symptoms would you stop taking her to the doctor before they figured it out & before it reached a point where it has caused irreversiblr harm?
Yeah, just saw that the make an example was the post above yours. My bad.

 

We don't know that they didn't. Doctors mis-diagnose, under-estimate, or even flat out miss ailments all the time, and not out of incompetence, either. Any set of symptoms can be caused by any number of ailments, so a lot of guess work can be involved. From the article, we don't know that the parents just sat on their hands until their daughter's condition became irreversible. You have to assume quite a bit to come to that conclusion, and we all know what happens when we assume...

 

Ponit is that the human body was designed for a specific diet. Not eating meat is something I respect and can get. But diary products are essential for the body.

And yes parents that overfeed, smoke during pregnancies etc etc are the same.

 

Hmmm... I'm not so sure all those examples apply equally. Imposing a particular diet or religion is a lot more difficult to escape than say giving your kids a particular political slant. I saw it is Serbia in the 90s - young people tended to vote for the various opposition parties, while their parents would happily vote the government. And lets not even pretend that parents can influence their kids dress sense once they hit their teens.

Religion on the other hand, tends to stick (though of course not always) - probably because the indoctrination is a lot more emotional and revolves around quite basic concepts of good and bad, sin, guilt etc which can be taught to quite young children. (Unlike say politics where terms like 'fiscally conservative', 'liberal', 'pro/anti-european' tend to require that the child is quite a bit older. Of course, it can be simplified for quick indoctrination (godless liberals vs gun-toting rednecks).).

With diet, i feel indoctrination is more akin to religion - especially if it is based on ethical grounds. If a kid is taught that eating meat/milk/honey is wrong, they might never try it, never realise they have a choice in the matter. On the other hand, since there are lapsed vegeterians out there (bacon, bacon is the key) then I could be wrong in this.

Also, are there physiological aspects? How well is your digestive tract able to deal with meat and milk at 18 (when you leave home) if you never had them before?

 

The human digestive system is very flexible and can adjust (given proper time) to a wide variety of diets. I recently heard about a man who survived the last 17 years on nothing but chocolate (I don't know that he was terribly healthy, mind you). If you've never eaten meat before, you don't handle it well, nor milk, nor a wide variety of vegetables or grains. If you've grown up eating them, or things like them, on the other hand, you generally don't have any problems.

 

Veganism isn't a religion, nor is it child abuse. It is a diet, and requires every bit as much "indoctrination" as a meat based diet does. My sons have already both been "indoctrinated" into Veganism when they asked me why we don't eat meat. Once they realized that I wasn't lying (they initially thought I was pulling their leg, since I'm a bit of a kidder) when I told them that beef comes from cows, chicken comes from chickens, and pork comes from pigs, that was enough for them. I didn't try to convince them that there was something wrong with killing for food. It simply wasn't necessary, since my kids apparently thought that already.

Judging by the other vegetarian families I've known, this is the norm.

Despite the fact that nearly 2/3 of all human beings are lactose intolerant, you are seriously positing an argument that the milk of another species is somehow essential to the human body? Beneficial for some, sure, but necessary? Come on.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to be constantly offered meat - and occasionally eat it - in order to develop a taste for it. If you and your sister didn't want to touch meat for quite a long time, and your parents just stopped preparing it all together rather than preparing it offering it to you at every meal, how would you have developed a taste for it? In continually offering meat to you, your parents slowly but surely indoctrinated you into their way of eating. Please note that I don't see anything wrong with that, but it is what it is. There's a reason fitness or fatness, high cholesterol or low cholesterol, etc tend to run in families. They all tend to eat the same food and follow the same lifestyle, even into adulthood. Why do you think that is?

You are right to point out that I won't be preparing meat in my house, but that doesn't mean that my kids won't have plenty of opportunities to eat it. We don't live in a vegetarian society. Nearly everyone they meet is an omnivore*, so they are exposed to meat and meat consumption each and every day. They aren't with me every minute of every day, either, and especially as they get older and more independent, they will have more and more opportunities to eat meat if they so choose.

*Regarding the term "meat based", I didn't coin it and I have no attachment to it. If it bothers you, I won't use it.

 

Habits learned in youth stay with you the rest of your life. But if they never try meat, what does swearing it off get them?

As it should be. When you bring a child into the world, be it planned or the consequence of fooling around, you have a responsibility to bring them up within society. The difference between you and the couple in the story is that you haver obviously done your research to train them in proper diets. The story doesn't tell us if they are nut jobs or just idiots. All it tells us is that they didn't teach their daughter about the right diet.

I would say it's a warning, but I suspect that the keyword Vegan is being trotted out to make the parents appear as freaks. As such, it loses the right message--proper diet. That problem is much more common than this story indicates.

I disagree. Religion comes with a set of morals. It teaches ethical philosophy (when done right, that is). Religion is a positive force in society when done right...

 

Given the age of their daughter, it's more likely that the diet of the entire household was problematic, since 99% of the food she would have been eating at that age would have been chosen and prepared for her by her parents and her parents would have been eating the exact same stuff (I'm assuming a packed lunch for school, since few schools have vegan lunch options). I'm willing to wager that the parents had a substantial D vitamin deficiency, too (and if they do not, I would be inclined to wonder if something other than diet was causing their daughter's deficiency), and passed their poor dietary habits onto their child.