samuraipanda.com

When Crown Shakur died of starvation, it wasn’t because his parents were vegans; it was because they were bad parents. A diet of beef broth and clamato juice would have resulted in Crown dying as equally as one of orange juice and soymilk. The fact that his parents are vegans is as irrelevant to his death as Christianity is to the burning of a girl by her father because “Satan made him do it” .

Nina Planck is using a tragic event to argument her beliefs in a “traditional” diet of meat and dairy, ignoring the fact that both are the heavy contributors to heart disease. She talks about protein deficiency as a “danger of a vegan diet for babies”, failing to mention that almost no child is fed a meat until well into their first year of life (assuming meat fed at all during their first years). She quotes studies showing vegan breast milk lacks enough DHA, without sourcing her material.

The fact remains that humans are omnivores that can eat anything and get the nutrients needed. Meat, one of many sources of protein, is just the most convenient and in a pre-industrial, diet limited world, was the only readily available source. But in today’s world we have access to foods that our grandparents wouldn’t have dreamed of. Tofu in the 50’s was a foreign word and hemp milk didn’t even exist. 20 years ago when I became a vegetarian, soymilk was gritty and only available in stores that smelled like patchouli and were run by people who looked a lot like Tommy Chong. Today I can go to the local Safeway and find have a dozen brands of soymilk as well as tofu. Advocating a “traditional” diet is like advocating “traditional” medicine from the 50’s. It may have been the best option at the time, but the world has provided us more options.

Children must be cared for by both their parents and their “village” (to, unfortunately, quote Hillary Clinton). It is the responsibility of the parents to provide primary care, including feeding and cleaning, helping them to develop. It is the responsibility of the “village” to ensure that the parents were doing this. Crown was failed not by his diet, but by those around him that should have taken care of him. Society failed him, not his diet.