- Should kids go vegan? – From Ray.
- American women dominate this year's Orange Prize shortlist – The award is, "Britain’s annual prize that goes to a novel written by a woman in English."
- Vatican orders crackdown on radical US nuns – "It says the group is undermining Roman Catholic teaching on homosexuality and is promoting "feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith"." From Donnie.
- Transvestites in the animal kingdom? – From Kirsten.
Talk about out of touch with reality.
I see nothing wrong with kids being vegan. I'm not even going to qualify that with "as long as their parents make sure they're getting good nutrition" because, well, duh. Parents should be doing that even if they aren't vegan, though so many fail (with help from the schools). It's just like any other ethical lesson you give your kids. When they're young they do it "cuz [I] said so" and then when they're older they learn the reasons for the decision and then get to make it themselves. I am against giving them unfounded reasons for the decision – and against people who can't be vegan due to medical reasons being forced to be vegan. Otherwise, until there's evidence it's harmful/not, not my business
I remember a while back a news story I read where two parents were aresseted for neglect because they had their todler & baby on a vegan diet, but apparently they weren't doing a very good job of it. The kids were underweight and malnourished (I think the baby had to go to the hospital, which is how the parents were discovered). Their diet worked perfectly fine for them, but was no good for their kids.
I think the danger is mostly that children and adults have very different nutritional needs, and if you put your kids on a strict vegan diet without seriously doing your research, you run the risk of leaving them malnourished. I'm sure it can probably be done, though as the article sugessts, it probably gets harder if you end up with a picky eater when they get older.
… Typing into google it seems this has happended a few times – people convicted of murder because they were both vegan AND making poor choices about infant nutrition. They all seem to be connected by a common thread of (Vegan for moral reasons) + ("natural is better, and can't be harmful" philosophy) + (some kind of anti-hospital/anti science attitude).
I used to be on a vegan forum (I find that vegans are obsessed wtih food and therefor make pretty good cooks). I remember when one of the stories of a malnurished baby on soy milk hit the overwhelming response from Vegans was "THOSE IDIOTS". Though this could be the 'no true scottsman' fallacy, it was certainly better than them all defending the parents.
I know several times it happened due to strict soy milk rations for small children. This article does point out that breastfeeding moms and kids who still rely mostly on milk need to be given highly fortified soy milk. Without that fortification there isn't enough densely packed nutrition for an infant to grow (which is the point of milk).
This is something which has always kinda bothered me. People will lambast stuff like WonderBread because they strip out all the nutrients and then "fortify" it with additional minerals/nutreints during processing but this isn't considered a good thing or as healthy as whole grain (fiber is a factor as well I know).
But a lot of stuff on a vegan diet, particularlly one aimed at children has fortificatoins for viatmins/protien/nutrients that simply aren't common in vegatables and grains. But in this instance the same fortification process is considered good and healthier. (Honestly soy products are some of the mostly heavily processed things on the shelf particularly soy milk I think).
Can one of our vegan/vegatarian commenters explain the difference? Or is this just an extension of the naturalistic fallacy used to remove cognative dissonance?
Well I think you have the pre-conception that all vegans buy is fancy schmancy products from whole foods or trader joes. Not true AT ALL. Vegans tend to be pretty knowledgeable cooks, so a lot of us just make stuff from produce bought from the store, and therefore fortification isn't necessary because the food itself is derived directly from whole vegetables.
Also, the vegans who are into pseudo-science will indeed make up lots of bullshit about how vegan products will cure your cancer and turn your kids into quantum physicists, so just ignore them and know that there are vegans who are into rational thinking as well.
As to kids being picky, this is true, it gets harder. But our solution to this has been to keep a very wide pallette of foods (Indian, Thai, Chinese, US Typical Food, Soul Food, West European Dishes, Russian Food, etc.) so the kids have options. Also, we taught ours how to cook since they were like 5 years old (kids learn amazingly fast), so now that they're a bit older, they're actually able to make something they want to eat if we don't feel like cooking.
Teaching them how to cook was the best step I think we could've done because they understand the dyanmics of flavor pretty deeply now and tend to input their thoughts into it during dinner planning. Makes our lives so much fucking easier :).
Soy milk is pretty much exactly as “processed” as apple juice.
A kid was killed by his vegan parents a while back when they fed him wheat milk rather than baby formula. This article repeats that fallacy saying "her kids do drink milk, except it’s made from almonds, hemp or rice." Except, of course, that this stuff is not milk. It's often possible to grow up healthy with a vegan diet, but you have to be very careful with it.
I am commenting all over this piece. But I just wanted to say that I love rebel nuns so much. I grew up with a large group of them (most of whom have sadly passed away). And they can be some of the awesomest and most inspiring ladies within the Catholic church. It in no way makes the church's actions better but when you're young and stuck inside it growning up they really do help to inspire young girls to push back against the more regressive messages. If the church loses rebel nuns I could see many more young people walking away from it.
I'm pulling this from Jezebel's coverage of the same announcement.
That is some amazing language right there. U wimminz need to understand that you have no power or opinions. Stop acting like you do and fall in line behind the menz. ><