A couple days ago I blogged about a crappy Guardian article warning against vegan diets for kids. Apparently not wanting to be outdone, the New York Daily News has followed it up with an equally crappy article on the same topic, with part of it quoting the Guardian’s POS.
The piece is even titled, “Vegan Diets May Not be Healthy for Kids.” Of course, you could just as easily write a piece titled, “Omnivorous Diets May Not be Healthy for Kids.” All you’ve got to do is find one kid eating a bad diet of a certain kind, and use that one example to assert that the diet carries terrible risks for all children.
Most troubling of all, the Daily News quotes Keri Gans, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. Gans makes feeding a vegan diet to kids sound both difficult and dangerous:
If the family knows what they are doing, works with a professional and gets the proper supplements, the needs could be met.
Could? So even after getting professional nutritional counseling, and using supplements where appropriate, your kid might still develop a deficiency as a vegan?
Flat out distorted reporting from a paper with the resources to cover this topic expertly. And what’s up with that Gans quote? It’s far and away the most anti-vegan statement I can remember seeing from the ADA. Link.
