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February 28, 2005

Nutritionist: Inflicting Vegetarianism on Children Is Unethical

With some notable exceptions, most of the vegetarians I've known have been physically soft and not very bright. As it turns out, this could be an indication that they got off to an early start with their unnatural diet.

According to Professor Lindsay Allen, Director of the US Agricultural Research Service's Western Human Nutrition Research Center at the University of California at Davis, denying animal products in children's diets during the critical first few years of their lives could cause permanent damage, as reported by The Independent.

"Animal source foods have some nutrients which are not found anywhere else," Dr. Allen pointed out at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC. "If you're talking about feeding young children and pregnant women and lactating women I would go as far as to say it is unethical to withhold these foods during that period of life."

If vegetarianism is bad, veganism (which forbids even dairy products) is worse still:

"There's absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans," said Allen.

Zinc, vitamin B12, calcium, iron, and vitamin A are among the crucial nutrients that you don't get from tofu.

Dr. Allen broke a study group of 544 poverty-stricken children in Kenya into four subgroups. One ate their normal diet — suitable for vegans and fly-covered famine victims — consisting of PETA-friendly foods like corn and beans. A second group was vegetarian but not vegan: they got to drink some milk. Group three got some extra energy from an oil supplement. Finally, the lucky ones got a daily 2-oz. supplement of meat.

Allen reports the results after two years:

It was found that compared with controls that had no intervention, the meat group had 80% more increase in muscle mass over the two years of the study, and the milk and energy group had 40% more increase in muscle mass.

In terms of cognitive function, the group that received the meat supplement showed the biggest improvement in fluid intelligence over the two years, and those who had either milk or energy supplements were better than the controls.

The group that received the meat supplements were more active in the playground, more talkative and playful, and showed more leadership skills.

The meat group showed a 35-point improvement on test scores for mental skills. The milk group improved by 14 points. The group doomed to the vegan diet showed no improvement (a rumor that they responded to every question on the intelligence tests with "Bush lied, people died" could not be confirmed).

"Had these children received these foods earlier in life or their mothers received them when they had been pregnant, or people could receive them throughout their lives, we think that the improvements in human capital development would be even more dramatic," Allen proposes.

Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray set themselves up for some serious abuse when they pointed out in The Bell Curve that sub-Saharan Africans have, on average, markedly lower IQs than people from other parts of the world. Rather than look for explanations for this fact, the intellectual establishment settled for the predictable one-word critique: "RACIST!" But the cause of this disparity need not be racial at all. Very possibly it is the result of poverty forcing African children to eat like moonbats.

Posted by Van Helsing at February 28, 2005 9:26 PM

Comments

Posted by: The MaryHunter at March 1, 2005 8:18 AM