Get Email Updates from Google
Raw Vegan Diet is Bad for Your Health
Last week the Independent newspaper had a report about a family who had gone vegan, with terrible consequences. A mother, Holly Paige, adopted a raw vegan diet for her family thinking that it was a very healthy and nutritious way of eating. But the diet led to her daughters having growth problems, both being below average height and weight for children of their age, with reduced bone density and very skinny arms and legs. They had also swollen bellies and pinched cheeks, and most worrying, small holes appearing in their teeth. This was after three years of a raw vegan diet which included copious amounts of fresh fruit, vegetables, seeds, grains, soya and pulses. But ofcourse, no meat, fish, milk, butter, cheese, yoghurt, eggs, or any of animal product for that matter.
On one occasion one of her daughters that was on the vegan diet instinctively grabbed a block of butter while shopping in a supermarket and started gnawing into it. For a three year old who had never tasted butter before, this showed that some very strong natural instincts were at play here, making her ravenous when around fatty and protein rich foods.
Her mother realised later that she had been brainwashed into thinking that a raw vegan diet was healthy, and that dairy products were bad for your health. It turned out that her children were suffering from extreme vitamin D and protein deficiency. She quickly stopped the vegan diet. They still mostly eat a raw diet, but do eat dairy, such as butter cheese, eggs and sometimes fish.
continued below ....
|
Being a raw vegan is not that same as just a standard vegan, as raw vegans have a much more limited range of foods on offer. For example, raw vegans cannot eat fortified cereals or baked goods, limited grains, and only a few types of pulses. Also, cooking food makes it more digestible for humans, and increases the amount of nutrients that can be absorbed into the body.
In another case last week, an eight year old Scottish vegan was admitted to hospital with rickets. Her spine was so damaged that it was more like that of an eighty year old woman than an eight year old. Rickets is a bone condition that is caused by lack of vitamin D. Although vitamin D is naturally produced in the body when exposed to sunlight, the average Brit cannot get enough sunlight to produce vitamin D. Therefore a diet high in vitamin D is essential, and for this, oily fish, eggs and butter is the only way to obtain it.
However, the British Dietician Association points out that being a vegan can be done healthily, but only if you know what you are doing, and consume the right foods and the correct supplements. They point out that professional advice is essential for anyone going on a restrictive diet.
It may be a little harsh to say that a raw vegan diet is bad for you period. But a raw vegan diet done badly, with no knowledge of vitamins and nutrients, can certainly be very bad for your health, both short term and long term. In the case of the 8 year old girl, her spine may never recover fully.
Tweet Me!
|
9 Responses to “Raw Vegan Diet is Bad for Your Health”
Post Your Message
So let’s completely overlook the number of people who suffer health problems who do eat the holy milk/eggs/meat/fish/etc. ANY diet in which you don’t achieve adequate nutritional intake is bad for your health – including the typical omnivorous diet.
Yes, that is pretty much what was meant by the last two paragraphs – “a vegan can be done healthily”. Any diet done badly is bad for you. The problem is, some people hear of the “health benefits” of certain diets, and then adopt them for the whole family without an understanding of what they are doing. This article is a warning to those that are considering a similar diet, not a suggestion that a vegan diet will always be bad for your health. I could talk all day about unhealthy omnivores…
This article is one of the worst I have read in a long time. Obviously the mother should have been more knowledgable before changing her family’s lifestyle. But the whole bit about her daughter gnawing on a block of butter is just ridiculous. That is not a natural human instinct. She is a child. Children do things like that. Anyway, I just wish you would think things over before publishing an article like this again.
Hello Brittany. This is a true story, and yes, children do do things like that – but the fact that they had until that point not had exsposure to dairy products, and responded in such an instinctive manner once they got hold of some, shows that they were craving the fats and minerals that they had been deprived of. The article is obviously written with the aim to make people think twice before adopting a diet like this for their children. It is a warning to parents. As I mentioned above, at no point am I saying that a vegan diet cannot be done in a healthy way. But, a vegan diet done badly, can have much worse and longer lasting impact on the development of a child, than other diets, due to the essential fats and proteins which are often neglected by inexperienced parents.
“… professional advice is essential for anyone going on a restrictive diet.”
This article is interesting to say the least.
I am a vegan and do understand how to have a balanced diet including supplementing B12 as a necessity and also take another supplement which I think anyone regardless of diet should do.
I’ve recently attempted to go raw vegan and I am telling you from experience it didn’t work, I felt light headed, agitated and I CRAVED meat, dairy, eggs, bread. I’ve never had cravings before when I was just a normal vegan. As soon as I had a grain (raw vegans can’t have most grains unless they are soaked before hand) that was cooked it passed, I felt MUCH better and the cravings left.
So, all I can say is it may work for some but it doesn’t work for me and I think that this article is interesting but I am disappointed you didn’t mention B12.
It is all too easy for vegans to be slagged off and accused of child neglect but as mentioned above children with the standard junk british omnivore diet are much more likely to have long term health problems.I have been a vegan for nearly 18 years with no health problems (in fact better health) and I never have taken supplements. (And there is much debate about how effective or even harmful supplements can be. )My sister’s two young children have been vegan from birth and are fitter and stronger than their peers. It is all about how you do it. obviously as a vegan I could live on chips and dark chocolate if i so chose. It is interesting to see the range of foods that were fed to the children in this story as it sounds much more nutritious than many average childrens diets. Re your vitiman D comments, most vegan margarines are fortified with it anyway…In my opinion dairy produce is not ‘natural’ (its not meant for us!) and it is a myth that is a good source of calcium – we do not absorb calcium from animal produce as well as from vegetables. If I have children I will bring them up vegan – not raw food vegan although I think done properly this can be very healthy. I am glad your article doesnt totally slag off veganism although the headline is sensationalist and untrue.
I am raw vegan and have been for about a year now. I lost 80 pounds so far, my blood pressure was on the verge of needing meds, now it is in the 70’s, my sleep apnoea is gone, my acid reflux is gone, my throat has healed from acid reflux damage, menstrual issues have disappeared.
Yet, i have not paid close attention to balance, i am depleted in vitamin D and B12.
so i am taking supplements now. Also there is a famous family storm and jingee who have 5 raw kids, they are skinny, but she tales them for check ups and they are in perfect health the oldest is 12 the youngest 2.
so you just have to research and know what you are doing with any eating regime.
Lori, that is really the point. You have to research. This article is a warning to those who do not research, to those who read somewhere that being a raw vegan is healthy, and create their own diet without consulting anyone, or reading up on it. Obviously if you do your research and maintain a balanced diet, you will be OK.
I am a raw vegetarian and I know that it can be done healthfully for children if one does the research and prepares recipes that use foods aiming to cover the rainbow of colors, textures, etc. available.
The difficulty comes in when one caters to a child who was at first raised on the standard American diet (SAD) and expects the same textures, flavors, etc. and therefore refuses the new and different diet so the weak parent is boxed in to only a few of the wide variety of things that should be in the child’s diet so as to insure adequate vegetable sourced protein and other nutrients are consumed.
The strong parent educates his or her self and as time goes on the child also on these nutrients, prepares nutritionally bountiful meals and insists the child eat correctly which results in a slender but awesomely healthy, balanced, intelligent and beautiful child blossoming forth. I know as I am watching this happen not only in my family but several others right now. Our view of what is healthy is in many cases skewed in this country to see fat as healthy and slender as sickly whereas both ranges can be malnourished and unhealthy but only one of these can be healthy.
Being overweight is always unhealthy and is caused by toxicity and malnourishment. To reiterate, it is absolutely necessary that one study and research to do ANY diet correctly and not just assume that a little of this and a little of that is going to cover a child’s needs, not to mention the other stages in our lives.
At this point a organic raw vegetarian diet offers the BEST NUTRITION POSSIBLE for the human body when done correctly but JUST LIKE ANY OTHER DIET can be devastating to the health if done incorrectly.