"There are no vegan societies for a simple reason"

Veganism - one more religion that refuses to accept out evolutionary past

As a family with a Type 1 insulin dependant patient in the house, a vegan diet would likely be the death of my son.

The story above shows a complete ignorance in matters nutritional. Somebody send them a copy of the Canada Food Guide for memorization.

This story reminds me of my sister relating how one of her veterinarian clients came in with a sick cat.

After a battery of tests determined that cat's blood chemistry was way out of whack, the client was queried as to what was the cat being fed.

It turned out the cat was on a fruit and vegetable diet just like the vegan owner!!!

I am always amazed at the towering stupidity of some people.

How on GOD's green earth do you feed a vegan diet to an animal classified as a carnivore?

Evidently, the couple above believe that there is a right in the Charter to terminal stupidity in a free and democratic society.

Somebody should help them out, by instructing them that absolute liability offences are not saved by the Charter of Rights.

see: Re B.C. Motor Vehicle Act, [1985] 2 S.C.R. 486

...

"An absolute liability offence violates s. 7 only if and to the extent that it has the potential to deprive life, liberty or the security of the person. There is no need that imprisonment be mandatory. The combination of imprisonment and absolute liability, however, violates s. 7 irrespective of the nature of the offence and can only be salvaged if the authorities demonstrate, under s. 1, such a deprivation to be a justified limit in a free and democratic society."

More to the point: vegan diets are dangerous for diabetics as well. I am a 51-yr old Type II diabetic, and I have struggled since diagnosed to get my blood sugar under control. If you go to the ADA or CDA sites, their "food guide" recommends at least 5 servings of cereals/grains per day. Following their recommendations, my blood sugar was regularly twice what it should be.

Then I stumbled on a few sites that suggested low carb was the way to go. That doesn't mean no vegetables, but it does mean no bread, pasta, rice, cereals, etc. Since I changed to the low carb diet (lean meats, eggs, lots of salad, nuts, and cruciferous vegetables), my sugars have literally dropped in half back to the normal range, even though I dropped one of my medications.

The current Canada Food Guide is a death sentence for most diabetics, just as the vegan food guide was a death sentence for that poor child.

we have a vegan tree hugger in the family
1. she is ALWAYS sick
2. she trys to make every one else feel guilty
3. she is a pain in the a$$ to cook for when we have family outings
in all, a total waste of oxygen, and a real burden to the family

Humans are omnivorous for a reason. Leave it to the Leftards to have to rediscover that reason every couple of years.

Diet: its not a choice, its biochemistry.

Lefties are all English majors, that's why they have trouble with it. Don't understand the whole amino acid vs. starch thing.

We do have molars AND incisors for a reason...

KevinB:

You are quite correct a richer protein diet allows for better blood glucose regulation as the digestion process slows the glucose uptake.

Steaks on the BBQ tonight!

BBQ party on Hans Island tonight? TGIF

While I'm not a vegan, I know more than a few perfectly healthy vegans - they are smart about their diets and see nutritionists on a regular basis to make sure they're getting all they need from the food they're eating.

That said, when you have a child your first concern should be the health of the child - not preventing animal cruelty. If animal cruelty is more of a concern to you than your child's ability to live and be healthy, you should not be having or raising children.

There *may* be vegan diets that children can live off of and be completely healthy (a nutritionist or pediatrician would know, I guess), but these people obviously didn't look into it.

I have a good friend who is a vegetarian, but she feeds her daugter (who is 2 this year) a full diet, and will explain to her why her mom doesn't eat meat when she's old enough to ask, and then the decision will be hers. I personally think this is the best way for a vegetarian or vegan to deal with their childrens' diets.

Humans are opportunistic, we eat what local environment offers, be it vegetable or animal. So enjoy, work out like a fiend, get your stress down and stop counting carbs. Diabetics can still enjoy lots of great food, as KevinB points out.

Umm people are mammals right? Women who give birth lactate for a reason. Why is that so hard to understand?

Bruce Randall said:

"BBQ party on Hans Island tonight? TGIF"

I think it was John Donne who stated that:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind..."

I would add the caveat unless it is HANS ISLAND and you throw a party!!

Even the Danes can come if they drop their Viking tendencies. They will realize of course I am descended from the HUNS and armed with a red hot poker!! But this is appropriate since my grandfather was among the 7th Ulanen (Lancers).

Who knows maybe one of those shiny new Canadian Coast Guard vessels will come and visit me.

Any interference in Christmas operations or manoeuvres however, will be severely rebuffed.

Cheers

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht BGS, PDP, CFP

Commander in Chief

Frankenstein Battalion

Knecht Rupprecht Division

Hans Corps

1st Saint Nicolaas Army

Army Group “True North”

There are lots of vegans successfully raising children. Many of my friends are fairly strict vegetarians/vegans as they come from north indian hindu and jain families. These cultures have survived thousands of years eating like this and know how to survive off of a diet I couldn't handle.

I always qualify my distaste for vegetarians/vegans by restricting it to western ones who just came up with it. Usual lefty/hippy trash who don't have a clue. Just don't include all those who are on those diets. If you've seen a traditional indian "auntie" you'll know that it's possible to get very large on vegetarian food. It does help that many indian dishes include simply vast quantities of oil and ghee (clarified butter). Some sag daal recipes have oil as the first ingredient before spinach!

It's the leftists we hate and ridicule, not those who have the misfortune to honestly share some practice that is frequently the manifestation of leftist idiocy.

LOL! Vegan cat... ROFLMAO! My cat (RIP!) would have made belts out of skin on my back if she did not receive her fish for a few days in winter. Her summer diet was mostly mice with rare bird which she ate under the book cabinet, as she new she'd get stern lecture from my grandmother.

After having practiced medicine in Vancouver for over 10 years, I've come to the conclusion that vegans are mentally ill. The most common deficiency I've seen in them is B12 deficiency and very low B12 causes psychosis in many people (one of the most difficult to treat psychotic I saw as an intern responded in days to an injection of B12 after we finally tested him for B12 deficiency). One vegan I was ready to certify under the mental health act had an undetectable B12 level and refused an injection of B12 because this was "chemical" not "natural". He was too psychotic to understand that the molecules are identical. The only non-animal source of B12 is yeast and a large number of people are unable to digest yeast sufficiently to release the B12 as was the case in this patient since he was taking yeast tablets which were a "natural" source of B12. I don't know what happened to this guy as I was doing a locum when I saw this patient, but it wouldn't surprise me if he's now confined to a wheelchair blaming a vast conspiracy of chemical companies and US imperialists for poisoning him.

I have no vegan patients in my practice and refuse to take them unless they are willing to get treatment for their mental disorder first. I have lots of vegetarian patients who are knowledgeable about nutrition and have no qualms about getting B12 injections or taking ferrous sulfate to make up for deficiencies in their diet. With the more ready availability of free range meat, a number of these vegetarians have started eating meat again.

Humans are omnivores and I find I function best on a high protein low carb diet. The only advantage of a high carbohydrate meal is if I wish to fall asleep after eating or to do carb loading before a long hike (and getting to bed early also). With many of my aboriginal patients I've found their diabetes has gone into remission once they've gone back to a traditional diet which has more in common with the Atkin's diet than anything else (lots of fish and game meat).

Vegans should have their children seized at birth since the risk to the child is far greater than should the mother be using drugs which is the most common reason kids are seized by the state in BC right now.

Cruelly, I can't help but marvel at how well natural selection works in cases like this.

And yes, I know I'm going to hell for that thought.

They make soy based baby formula expressly for people like this! Why didn't they use it?

I love it...I think of it as a self imposed population control on the moonbat cult...kinda neat watching people nuke their immune system by starving it of amimal based aminos with Vegan diets voluntarily.... thinking it's a life extender only to find Darwin show up at the end of the line unexpectantly.

There are damn few old vegans...there's a reason

In a vegan diet, ghee or butter, would not make the menu. Vegan's don't eat animal products, including dairy. I guess that breast feeding would be right out as well, since it is an animal product, go figure.

Also most cheese includes rennet which is an animal product, it is extracted from the mucous membrane of a cow's forth stomach.

Ther eis also an animal product used to help clarify beer, protiens like to stick to and it settles out.

Another interesting food proccess is for making chocolate. It really is interesting to see what steps are taken to make things we enjoy and everything that was done to get them there.

Vegans are mentally ill. Al Gore is mentally ill. Global warming is a French socialist invention to ensure U.N. control of freedom-loving people. Wake up before Jack Layton becomes dictator!

And PETA will come to their defense knowing what idiots these PETA wacks are and they were vegetarians to so was ADOLPH HITLER and CHARLES MANSON HEY PAMMY ANDERSON SCREW YOU AND YOU DUMB LETTUCE LEAF BIKINI

My favorite vegetarians are the Fruitarians. These guys won't eat anything that isn't a fruit or seed of some kind, because they don't want to kill the poor widdle plants.

Darwin Award winners for sure.

vegetarians, let us just call them cabbage heads

I'll be unpopular and stick up for the vegans. Contrary to the assertion in the article, a vegan diet is indeed sustainable over the long term. Carl Lewis's best year -- the year he beat Bob Beamon's long jump record -- came after he'd switched to vegan. The uber-popular blogger Steve Pavlina has been ardently vegan since the early 90s; anyone curious can find decent resources there.

The caveat is that you have to be very well informed about what you eat, and you generally have to eat quite a bit more food (by volume) than if you're eating animals or animal products. It sounds like the problem with the parents in this article is that they were stupid; being vegan only compounded the danger.

The "how do you get your protein?" question is about as relevant to a vegan as the "how do your kids learn to socialize?" question is to a homeschooler -- it's a red herring, and a solved problem. In a nutshell, go look at the largest, most muscle-bound silverback gorilla in your local zoo -- he's vegan. Primates can get plenty of protein from plants; it just takes more work.

And that's why I'm not vegan myself -- it's too much work. I went vegetarian for one month to give it a whirl, but decided to remain an omnivore. However, the research I did at the time convinced me that people who are hardcore enough can indeed be healthily vegan.

This post is a plethora of ignorance and hatred. Please do some actual research. Breast feeding is highly recommended by and for vegans. The American Dietic Association recognizes that a vegan diet is healthy for all ages from infancy to adulthood, and it really doesn't take any more time or planning to eat a healthy vegan diet than it does to eat a healthy omnivorous diet. Most vegans are not preachy or needy and will provide for themselves rather than be a burden to others. We simply want to live a peaceful life that does not unnecessarily rely on the death or suffering of animals. Why is that so horrible to you?

The couple that killed their child was clearly ignorant, and they had nothing to do with veganism. All soy milk cartons clearly state they are not to be used as formula. The same thing would have happened had it been cow's milk. Most vegans would raise their child on breast milk and soy formula, and take them to doctors for check ups, and have perfectly healthy children. These people hid behind the pretense of veganism or order to try to get out of a malicious murder. Even the prosecution believed that. Please don't be guilty of the same by using them as an example of veganism.