RE: The other threat to children

[Guest guest]

On Wednesday, April 24, 2002, at 11:05PM, Mr. Pete <plcohon wrote:

 

>Thanks to those of you who gave me much needed feedback on the subject of

>linking child abuse with feeding fast food and other animal products (not

>just dairy) to children.

>

 

 

Well, other than CathoIic Priests.... I don't know if anyone brought this up,

but the last book by Doctor Spock would be very useful ammo. He said kids

should not drink milk and was absolutely against eating meat, which I think he

called a bad habit.

 

 

tony

[Guest guest]

I met Ben Spock & Dr Attwood several times.

Ben loved cheese.. His last wife would

make it " disappear " from the frig when he

was not looking..this

(a vegan macro diet got him to stop having

strokes and bought him years)

Dr Attwood is a celebrated pediatrician.

They knew each other & I think Dr Attwood

may have helped bring Ben to his new point

of view...Re dairy & meat.

 

http://www.vegsource.com/attwood/milk.htm

 

http://www.vegsource.com/attwood/

 

Don't expect most MDs to change their ignorant views.

 

But do not let their ignorance wreck lives.

 

 

 

Tony Martin [veggiedude]

Wednesday, April 24, 2002 10:43 PM

 

[sFBAVeg] RE: The other threat to children

 

 

On 4/24/02 4:10 PM, " Tony Martin " <veggiedude wrote:

 

> I don't know if anyone brought this up, but the last book by Doctor Spock

> would be very useful ammo. He said kids should not drink milk and was

> absolutely against eating meat, which I think he called a bad habit.

 

Here¹s a followup... I have a CNN link about it here:

 

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9806/20/dr.spock/

 

 

³This note was written on Mac OS X, a UNIX based vegan OS.²

 

 

tony

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

I was sad to see Dr Attwood has passed.

 

http://www.vegsource.com/attwood/obit.htm

 

This obit shows he did cause Ben Spock to change his mind.

 

I apologize for any hard feelings caused by my passion on the subject.

 

But as you might understand a rape victim.. Dairy products caused me

 

personally to suffer unspeakably from asthma and hay fever most of my life.

 

Putting me into the hospital (oxygen tent) for weeks several times as a

child.

 

My father also almost died several times.. and suffered most of his life for

 

the same reason. Why did MDs not see and save us from our suffering.

 

It is unfortunate that Dr Attwood suffered a similar childhood:

 

http://www.vegsource.com/attwood/allergy.htm

 

And I cannot stand the thought of one more child suffering a similar fate.

 

 

(Though know millions are and will because of medical ignorance, arrogance

& brain washing by the huge PR system of the dairy industry)

 

 

Jay Gleason [jay.gleason]

Wednesday, April 24, 2002 11:36 PM

 

RE: [sFBAVeg] RE: The other threat to children

 

 

I met Ben Spock & Dr Attwood several times.

Ben loved cheese.. His last wife would

make it " disappear " from the frig when he

was not looking..this

(a vegan macro diet got him to stop having

strokes and bought him years)

Dr Attwood is a celebrated pediatrician.

They knew each other & I think Dr Attwood

may have helped bring Ben to his new point

of view...Re dairy & meat.

 

http://www.vegsource.com/attwood/milk.htm

 

http://www.vegsource.com/attwood/

 

Don't expect most MDs to change their ignorant views.

 

But do not let their ignorance wreck lives.

 

 

 

Tony Martin [veggiedude]

Wednesday, April 24, 2002 10:43 PM

 

[sFBAVeg] RE: The other threat to children

 

 

On 4/24/02 4:10 PM, " Tony Martin " <veggiedude wrote:

 

> I don't know if anyone brought this up, but the last book by Doctor Spock

> would be very useful ammo. He said kids should not drink milk and was

> absolutely against eating meat, which I think he called a bad habit.

 

Here¹s a followup... I have a CNN link about it here:

 

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9806/20/dr.spock/

 

 

³This note was written on Mac OS X, a UNIX based vegan OS.²

 

 

tony

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Pete wrote:

 

> Before I take this idea any farther, I'd like to hear from any of you who

> have ideas or concerns about this approach, especially those of you who have

> already expressed opinions critical of the idea.

 

Okay. You asked. : )

 

Some background on me just so people know from where I'm coming: I am

co-founder and a director of Vegan Outreach, and a Registered Dietitian. I

promote veganism in order to reduce animal suffering.

 

In so doing, I think that it's very important to face what is actually true,

and that believing things that aren't true will only delay coming to grips

with reality and making true inroads for animals. As I think Abraham

Lincoln said, " You can't fool all of the people all of the time. "

 

So, I am interested in the evidence. If the evidence says that animal

products will cause premature death in all people - -then I think that is

great news for the animals and we should promote such ideas with abandon.

But if the evidence says that animal products are actually extremely

healthy, then we need to face these facts and figure out how we can work

around such things in order to try to help animals.

 

I think the reality lies somewhere in the middle -- in general, there are

some unhealthy things about animal foods -- probably more unhealthy things

about animal foods than about plant foods. Basing a great majority of one's

diet on animal products is unhealthy. But, eating small or moderate amounts

is probably not going to kill or harm most people.

 

The main two questions are what does eating animal products versus being a

vegetarian or vegan do for quality of life, and length of life? We already

know from pooling the results of the 5 large population studies on

vegetarians that we tend to have very good health, but that meat-eaters who

do not smoke or drink a lot of alcohol also have very good health. In the

pooled results, vegetarians' mortality rates were the same as the

non-vegetarians.

 

As for quality of life, vegetarians seem to have lower rates of diabetes,

rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, diverticulosis, gallstones, appendicitis

and possibly a few other diseases.

 

Pooled results on cancer mortality rates have shown no difference between

vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Data on cancer Incidence (rather than

mortality) has been mixed, with some studies favorable and others not. No

formal, sophisticated analysis has been performed pooling all the data

together on cancer incidence.

 

There have not been enough vegans studied to draw many results about vegans.

About 750 have been studied and they tended to have exactly the same

mortality rates as non-vegetarians, and slightly higher than lactoovo

vegetarians (the result was not statistically significant; i.e., it could be

due to random chance).

 

A new study has recently been initiated in Europe that contains about 2,000

vegans. Timothy Key, a vegan for animal rights reasons, and the author of

the pooled analysis on vegetarian mortality, says that this will still not

be enough vegans to draw many conclusions that are statistically

significant. He says that we know vegans do not have overly high rates of

mortality, but it will be many years before we know much more.

 

I can given citations and details for all this information if anyone wants

them. I would give a link to our website that contains this info, but our

site is down until at least Saturday. : (

 

> Doll made three suggestions:

>

> 1. The campaign should be sponsored by the Physician's Committee for

> Responsible Medicine (PCRM) to give it credibility. Funds should be

> contributed by other animal and veggie groups but they should not be named

> to avoid giving ammunition to opponents.

>

> 2. She agrees with Jack Norris that the focus should be on the voluminous

> evidence that now exists linking the eating of animal products with

> childhood medical problems and general poor health. To be effective, the

> campaign should avoid scare or shock tactics.

 

I'm glad that Doll agreed with me : ), but I don't think I said that there

is voliminous evidence linking eating animal products with childhood medical

problems.

 

Obesity and premature atherosclerosis from a combination of inactivity, too

much saturated fat, and too much trans fat (the trans fats not being animal

in origin but need to be considered in the analysis of where the problems

lie) are the main arguments for problems related to animal products in

children.

 

If we are to say that feeding kids animal products is child abuse and

therefore kids should be vegan, then I think that it's important not only to

show that animal products have bad things about them, but that vegan

children have a clear advantage. Otherwise, we don't really have a basis for

our claims and we might even be fooling ourselves.

 

Simone wrote:

 

> They [PCRM] have access to hundreds of published medical studies, population

> studies, etc. that show a strong link between animal products and poor

> health in children.

> The problem is that the mainstream media and even many

> alternative publications choose not to highlight these studies.

 

I have read almost all (if not all) the studies since 1980 comparing

vegetarian children to non-vegetarian children and have not seen any that

found a significant difference in health between the two groups. I have not

seen the population studies spoken about above that link animal products

with poor health in children. I'd be interested in those citations.

 

As far as evidence regarding dairy: Some individuals may respond poorly to

dairy either through autoimmune reactions, allergic reactions, and lactose

intolerance. But these are much more individual-related than a rule for all

children.

 

Seventh-day Adventists vegetarians most of whom consume dairy, may be the

healthiest group of people alive (California white SDAs are the

longest-lived formerly studied population, and the vegetarians within their

group live longer than the meat-eaters). I don't know their exact dairy

consumption, but I just sent an email in to Gary Fraser, who is the author

of many of the studies on SDAs, asking him if he knows.

 

For all the bad things said about dairy and children, and the level of

science that they are based on (anecdotal reports rather than prospective or

randomized controlled trials), there is about as much being said about soy

(also not based on the best types of studies) and some about gluten. So, I

think we need to be careful which types of evidence we decide is valid so

that we do not inadvertantly condemn some large vegan staples such as soy

and possibly wheat.

 

As I pointed out before, prostate cancer and ovarian cancer seem to be

increased by dairy consumption, while dairy seems to protect against colon

cancer (though it may only be from the calcium).

 

> Strict vegetarian or vegan infants and children do not

> get ear infections. It's very simple, they just don't.

 

Unfortunately, I know one vegan child who did get about 4 ear infections

when about 1 year old. So, this isn't entirely true, though I hope vegan

children generally get less, and it would be great to see a study that could

determine whether this is true (I couldn't find any).

 

> There are quite a few published studies that describe in detail the role of

> dairy in promoting fluid build up, inflammation, infection, etc.

 

Do you know of any of these studies? I used to think that dairy caused a

mucus build-up. In one of my nutrition classes, we were told that this was a

myth. But, I've never investigated it further.

 

In a (relatively quick) search, I found this study:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & list

_uids=2154152 & dopt=Abstract

 

in which people drinking milk didn't have more mucus. And this one:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & list

_uids=8452377 & dopt=Abstract

 

presented some evidence that milk causes mucus in some people (that was my

very liberal take of the abstract, not necessarily the authors'). I couldn't

find any other similar studies.

 

Another reason why I think it's important for the animal rights community to

look at the research on the health of vegans is that it can give us clues as

to how to improve our health if it is lacking in any way. In so doing, we

could eventually make the studies done on vegans more favorable.

 

So, as far as the child abuse thing goes, I'd make it a " have kids eat more

fruits, vegetables, beans " than that " giving them any sort of animal

products is abuse. " And it doesn't really have to equate it with violent

abuse they really are trying to get a lot of media and not caring if it's

bad media. It could just say, " Not feeding your kids whole plant foods on a

daily basis is irresponsible parenting. "

 

Jack

[Guest guest]

Thanks so much for your input, Jack. I did not mean to say that Doll agreed

with you about " voluminous evidence linking eating animal products with

childhood medical

problems, " but that she agreed with you that any campaign should focus on the

evidence. Please excuse my poor sentence structure. If PCRM goes for this

idea, I suppose their experts would have to determine what evidence they think

has merit as I'm certainly not qualified to do so. It also might be an idea to

stress that any child abuse inherent in a fast-food, animal-based diet is

" unintentional, " to avoid equating child molestations or beatings with diet, an

equation I never meant to make. Perhaps your suggestion to stress the

importance of feeding fruits and vegetables to kids would be an easier and more

realistic sell. But I wonder if it would really make much difference in the

number of animals murdered for food or the degree of environmental degradation

caused by animal agriculture. These are goals that concern me as much as, or

more than, human health. As I'm sure you already understand, the idea of a

campaign linking feeding animal foods to kids with unintentional child abuse is

not only to save kids but also to save the animals and the environment. Thanks

again for your extremely well-informed input.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

I hate to be lumped with all vegans, and studies on such a group,

because many if not most have bad diet and exercise habits.

 

Ellen G White (SDA Profit) said milk would become something to be avoided.

 

And the word is out among health conscious SDAs and in their institutions

their hospitals, The Weirmire (sp) Inst. & Lifestyles Magazine etc.

plus their MDs are more Hip. (Esp. in California [where Loma Linda Medical

School is])

I suggest you contact John Westerdial (SP)

 

It is funny how much Seventh-day Adventists and Straight Edger's have in

common.

But they do where their clothes and hair a bit different though

 

And it would not hurt to read all that was written by Dr Attwood.

 

 

Jack Norris [jacknorris]

Thursday, April 25, 2002 1:36 PM

 

Re: [sFBAVeg] RE: The other threat to children

 

 

A new study has recently been initiated in Europe that contains about 2,000

vegans.

 

Seventh-day Adventists vegetarians most of whom consume dairy, may be the

healthiest group of people alive (California white SDAs are the

longest-lived formerly studied population, and the vegetarians within their

group live longer than the meat-eaters). I don't know their exact dairy

consumption, but I just sent an email in to Gary Fraser, who is the author

of many of the studies on SDAs, asking him if he knows.