Here





Check out the last paragraph.

heh.. all i can say is i have a four year old vegan daughter who is in excellent health..

heehee...what a crock.



of course, i would expect nothing less from babycenter. that has got to be the worst source of information for pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood.

i have a hard time believing 2 slices of cheese has the same amount of protein as 2 cups of beans! wtf!?! i think this article shows how ignorant the author is..

What a joke. I don't get the purpose of her article. She obviously dosen't know anything about veganism. My 3 1/2 yr old has always been vegan and he's very healthy. I didn't see a mention of childhood obesity, juvinille diabetes, ect., ect. I guess that wouldn't help her point. I stay away from all of those "Parents" articles or baby -magazine health concerns. They are usually industry-suported and are nothing more then advertisements for corporations and food proccessors.

I think it would be cool if you (and oneness) would somehow publicize or publish your experience as a successful vegan mother. All these negative portrayals require positive portrayals to balance it out.

No offense, and I'm not necessarily agreeing with the article either cause I haven't read the whole thing.... but:



If you know statistics,

Single case studies alone do NOT debunk evidence taken from a large population.



Reporting the health of one veg*n child means nothing.

She's from my area. Maybe I can write up something nice with some info for her. I have to be nice, though, I might end up working with her, we are both in health sciences!





ETA

I put three foods into a nutrition calculator. 1 cup of beans has more than 15 grams of protein. Same as in 2 oz of chicken or over 2.5 oz of cheese. Servings of meat for an adult are supposed to be no more than 3 oz and cheese no more than 1 oz for an adult.



Food 1 CHICKEN-BROILERS OR FRYERS

-DRUMSTICK-MEAT&SKIN-COOKED

-ROASTED 1::1 oz::28.35 grams (small amount, should be about 3 oz)



Food 2 BEANS-REFRIED-CANNED 1::1 c::252 grams



Food 3 CHEESE-NATURAL-MONTEREY 1::1 oz::28.35 grams



Nutrients Food 1 Food 2 Food 3

Calories 61.24 269.64 105.75

Protein grams 7.65 15.62 6.95

Fat grams 3.18 2.77 8.59

Carb g 0 46.62 0.2

Sodium mg 25.52 1068.48 152.04

Vitamin A IU 28.35 0 269.33

Vitamin C mg 0 15. 12 0

Sat Fat grams 0.86 1.03 5.41

Cholesterol mg 25.8 0 25.23

I wasn't giving my son's diet as a testimony to veganism being healthy, but a well-informed parent can raise their child on a vegan diet without fearing "rickets", ect. I also didn't see any statistics regarding the health of vegan children, so I don't know what "evidence" is being studied in regards to the article. I would be glad to have my son involved in a study of vegan children, but they are few and far between outside of cultural/religious veg*n's.



I think what Epski meant that it would be encouraging for other vegan mom's to have resources which suit them, rather then the usual omni viewpoint. I have loads to say...(obviously, blah, blah, blah)

Yes, punkmommy, that is what I meant. I'm quite familiar with statistics, too, thanks to the epidemiological background and studies of my wife.



I'm more interested in public opinion. The more positive portrayals we see, the more the tide of public opinion turns our way.



I hate to always bring gay and lesbian issues into this, because one's a choice and one's not, but look how far that group has come in the last ten years as positive portrayals in media and entertainment have shaken up the public's way of thinking. I think we need to do the same, and to define ourselves as a consumer market to be taken seriously.

you should vote here :



http://www.babycenter.com/general/ba...ding/4025.html

40% said yes

60% said no



Not bad, considering how uneducated people are, about dairy products, especially.

Epski writes:

=================

I hate to always bring gay and lesbian issues into this, because one's a choice and one's not, but look how far that group has come in the last ten years as positive portrayals in media and entertainment have shaken up the public's way of thinking.

=================



I remember gays working at this 30 years ago, and making this same remark 30 years ago. So things must be progressin rather slowly if they are still doing the same thing, and still making the same comment about their results. Not that slow progression is a bad things. I just want to make it clear that changes often don't happen as fast as one might like. Some cultural beliefs are deeply ingrained.

Everything progresses slow, yes. A script I want to get made is based on novel written over half a century ago, about blacks living in a white world. I want to do it as a period piece so that people will see the parallels and realize just how far we haven't come, Jim Crow laws or not.

I really didn't see the problem with the article, since it did answer the question " Is it alright to raise my child VEGETARIAN" I didn't see Vegan anywhere. The author didn't knock it, she actually said vegetarianism was fine.

Wiccanveg: the author knocked a vegetarian diet. She says it is difficult to make it suitable for children.



She says:

===============

The biggest problem with a vegetarian diet is that kids must eat a lot of food to get enough calories, protein, and iron. A child would need to eat four to six times the volume of non- meat protein sources to get the amount of protein found in a single serving of meat or cheese. For example, to get the same amount of protein in two slices of cheese, your child will have to east two cups of beans. Children who can't eat that much won't get enough protein; their intestines lose some of the ability to absorb fat, which exaggerates a calorie deficiency and can result in a child's failure to gain weight.

================



She is saying that many children won't gain weight unless they eat an inordinate amount -- 4 to 6 times the volume -- of veg food, as they eat animal-based food, such as meat, or cheese.

The last paragraph mentions a "carnivorous" diet. Do some parents feed their babies only meat?

Should parents really worry about protein? Breastmilk, the perfect food for babies and children is only 5% protein!

This shows that the author of the article is not very educated as she/he doesn't even know the proper term for someone who eats plants and meat.

The article's author pretty much just rehashed all the old myths about why you have to eat meat and cheese. Considering she's a registered dietician, we should all be very afraid of just how far up the educational chain the National Dairy Board has apparently reached.

When I was pregnant with my last child, my doctor raised concerns about my vegan diet. He said that I would most likely suffer from anemia and that being vegan would affect the baby's weight and development. I did have very mild anemia at one point in the pregnancy( even meat eating mothers can suffer from anemia during pregnancy) but my baby weighed 11 pounds at birth and has been very advanced developmentally.

OMG...11 lbs?!!! That hurts just thinking about it!!

I'm not sure which percentage is correct, but I read the other day that breastmilk is 1.5% not 5% protein, if that's the case we need even less protein!!




My baby was 10 lbs at birth and is also very advanced for her age. I was only a vegetarian though...but we definitly prove that veg*n moms can have big, healthy babies!

does anyone have a link that breaks down the nutritional components of breastmilk percentage wise?



i am having a hard time finding info on how breastmilk might change over time, fat content and nutrient wise. we are told that the breastmilk a 20 month old gets is different than the breastmilk a one month old gets, but how much research has actually been devoted to finding out just how much they are likely to differ? and how much research has gone into finding out how much a mother's diet really affects the quality of her milk?



my 19 month old is still eating very little in terms of solid food, and according to the medical establishment she should be anemic (she's not) and undernourished. i don't think that she is undernourished, but in the absence of any good, hard data, that's just my mama intuition talking.