Milk is for Babies

Aunty reports ...

A vegan couple have been sentenced to life in prison by a US court over the death of their malnourished baby.

The baby died six weeks after birth after being fed a diet largely made up of soy milk and organic apple juice.

Defence lawyers for Lamont Thomas and Jade Sanders said they had starved their child unintentionally by adhering to a strictly vegan diet.

This is a tragic story and should never really have come to pass, one might say looking at the biology, milk production in the mother and high lactase production in the child, that milk is essentially, and essential, for babies. Most health studies are unanimous in claiming breast milk is best, though milk from other sources can also substitute, commercial babies milk is generally full of nutritional additives to compensate. On a side note, pasteurisation of milk destroys Phosphatase which is essential to calcium uptake. I would not suggest feeding raw non-human milk to a child.

The Vegan Society says on their web pages ...

The first food for a vegan baby should ideally be breast milk.

Breast milk is a complete natural food and contains everything a baby needs. Many benefits are conveyed to the baby by breast milk. It contains antibodies which help protect baby from coughs, colds, chest and stomach infections and breast fed babies are less likely to develop allergies. It is quite probable that breast milk contains substances needed by growing infants that are not even known to be essential and are not included in infant formula.

From Wikipedia

The normal mammalian condition is for the young of a species to lose the ability to digest milk sugar (lactose) effectively after the end of the weaning period (a species-specific length of time often equal to roughly 3% of lifespan). In humans, lactase production usually drops about 90% during the first four years of life, although the exact drop over time varies widely. However, certain human populations have undergone a mutation on chromosome 2 which results in a bypass of the common shutdown in lactase production, allowing members of these populations to continue consumption of fresh milk and other milk products throughout their lives.

What this also shows is that milk consumption in adults is not necessary.

The article continues ...

But prosecutors in the US city of Atlanta said the couple had deliberately neglected their child.

"No matter how many times they want to say, 'We're vegans, we're vegetarians,' that's not the issue in this case," Prosecutor Chuck Boring is quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.

"The child died because he was not fed. Period," he said.

Wait ... Prosecutor Chuck Boring ?

You can not make this shit up.

Crown Shakur weighed 3.5lb (1.6kg) at the time of his death in April 2004.

that probably indicates quite a low birth weight, although it's claimed that a vegan diet during pregnancy can result in low birth weights, I'm getting the strong feeling this couple didn't have a clue what they were doing. The Vegan Society has some guidelines.

Back to the story ...

Sentencing the couple, the judge said the murder verdict made the life sentence mandatory.

Jade Sanders told the judge: "I loved my son - and I did not starve him."

I think murder seems a little strong, manslaughter would have probably been more accurate, but then again as vegans, and even more importantly as parents, they should have done their background reading. Needless to say, although it could be argued this is Darwinism in action, I do feel very sorry for them for the loss of their child.

Mahalo to Jessica for bringing this story to my attention.

2007-05-11 11:58:07

Pete says ...

""Defence lawyers for Lamont Thomas and Jade Sanders said they had starved their child unintentionally by adhering to a strictly vegan diet." As you've said, vegans think babies should be breastfed. It's what breasts are for! Well, partially. If the mother couldn't breastfeed for some reason, then there are still other sensible options. The parents are either mad or stupid - either way they were grossly negligent. I've heard that vegans kids are usually slightly shorter and lighter, possibly because they are actually the right size, and not boosted by cow's hormones."

2007-05-12 11:06:53

Optimist says ...

"The Vegan Society has a list of soy-based baby formulas which contain added nutrients so that babies get the nutrition they require. Soy milk is mainly water. I've heard tales of the effects of growth hormones being passed in cow's milk, I hadn't thought about it effecting birth weights, interesting, I'll have a think about it. Only the nipple is essential to breast feeding, breasts are believed to be, primarily at least, secondary sexual features. My cellmate recently gave me her two main tips for breastfeeding babies :-

Arrange to hire a hospital grade breast pump prior to going into labour
Breastfeed lying down

The latter was recently mentioned by the BBC following a study on various different ways to breastfeed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6612573.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6613229.stm http://www.biologicalnurturing.com/pdf/Poster%20for%20web%20site-locked.pdf http://www.biologicalnurturing.com/"

2007-05-14 09:59:31