The NHS advises that children can grow healthily whilst being raised on a vegan diet, it is imperative that they have a well-planned and varied diet and that they may need to take some specific vitamin supplements to make sure they have all of the nutrients that they need to grow. As more and more people are turning vegan across the world, there are now numerous studies that tackle this topic.
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Scientifically proven nutrient deficiency
While adults quickly tend to recognise that they have a nutrient deficiency and can take supplements to make sure they get all the nutrients they need, studies show that these diets can cause problems for little children. Children can neither explain nor express that they aren’t getting what they need or that they’re in pain. Because of this, there are lots of critics speaking out about the effects of raising children as a vegan.
The German news source Die Zeit did a report on one of the German studies that dealt with this:
Stunted growth and diet deficiency are constantly a topic of discussion – every single one of them contain the same observations that a recent study led in Germany supports. The results show that of the children involved in the study, ten percent of children raised vegan and six percent of children raised vegetarian are too small for their age.
In the most serious cases, this nutrient deficiency can be fatal, because these children can become more susceptible to infections.
A case in Sydney shocked the media
There has also been another case of nutrient deficiency recorded in Sydney, Australia after parents didn’t go to the doctor for a check-up after their baby daughter was born. They exclusively fed their baby vegan foodfor the first 19 months of her life. They gave hervegetables, fruit, bread, rice milk, oats, tofu, potatoes and peanut butter. The NHS recommends that children under 5 should not be given rice milk, as it may contain too much arsenic.
When the little girl was 19 months old, she got the shakes and her parents didn’t know what to do to help her, so they took her to the hospital. The doctors were shocked because their little girl’s growth was extremely stunted. At 19-months-old, she should have already been able to walk and measured a little under a metre tall. The little girl, whose name was not released by the parents, was the size of a three-month-old baby! She also didn’t have any teeth…
The doctors quickly reacted and now the parents are facing a five-year prison sentence. The young girl has since been living with afoster parentfor a little over a year and is doing better.
Take a look at the video above for more on this sad case.
