So it has seemed that in the last week that I have gotten some flak for posting this series. I will address some concerns. Like I have reiterated in my previous blog posts about the veggie diet is that this series is inspired by health problems I have seen in my own daughter and the same problems I see in other vegetarian children. These children have no choice in being vegetarian even though it is their health that is at stake.

The Low Carb Fibre issue

The Low Carb diet is not deficient in fibre. Actually fibre reduces net carb counts and you can get plenty of fibre from ground flax seeds, coconut, nuts, seeds and vegetables.

Saturated Fats And Cholesterol

The comments that I received about saturated fats and cholesterol were that they are not healthy, that the low carb movement is a fad and “plain out of style”. All of this is false. Saturated fats are very healthy and cholesterol may actually be an anti-oxidant.

As for the low carb diet being a fad, Gary Taubes writes in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories that the Low Carb diets can be traced all the way to the 1800’s and they are still around to this day in many different forms:

The Mercola Diet, Susan Sommers diet, The Paleo Diet, The South Beach Diet, Protein Power Diet, Dr. Atkins Diet, The Leptin Diet, Dr. Richard Bernstein Diabetes Solution, Dr. Al Sears the Author of “The Doctor’s Heart Cure” and many more… All of these except the Susan Sommers diet have medical doctors who stand behind them. I believe Susan Sommers referred to nutritionists and dieticians to help her outline the principles of Sommercising.

So if you still think that these diets are “fads” let me refer to this study that was performed for 12 months (which is one of the longest and largest studies performed) and found that the Atkins Diet was the healthiest.

The results of the study:

At the end of a year, the 77 women assigned to the Atkins group had lost an average of 10.4 pounds. Those assigned to LEARN lost 5.7 pounds, the Ornish followers lost 4.8 pounds and women on the Zone lost 3.5 pounds, on average. In all four groups, however, some participants lost up to 30 pounds.

After 12 months, women following the Atkins diet, relative to at least one of the other groups, had larger decreases in body mass index, triglycerides and blood pressure; their high-density lipoprotein, the good kind of cholesterol, increased more than the women on the other diets.

The Atkin’s Diet is a High Fat, medium protein, low carb

The Ornish Diet is a Low Fat, vegetarian diet, high carb

This study is comparing the Low Carb Atkins diet and the High Carb Vegetarian diet together. And as you can see it is the Atkins diet that turned out to be healthier. This study was published in the March 7, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Saturated Fats are traditional fats and have been used since the times of Jacob, Issac and Moses.

In previous generations we have never had so much heart disease. But now we have introduced a lot of vegetable oils into our diets and guess what?? Heart disease has skyrocketed! Why? Because saturated fats are stable fats, they don’t oxidize and vegetable fats are easily oxidized.

Polyunsaturated vegetable fats are one of the greatest contributors of heart disease. Not only that but they also greatly contribute to increased cancer, immune system dysfunction, damage to the liver, reproductive organs and lungs, digestive disorders, depressed learning ability, impaired growth and weight gain. Source: Nourishing Traditions, Pg 10

I did call this article Low Carb Diet Vs. The Vegetarian Diet so I will give you another example…

Many people would say that Dr. Atkins died from eating a low carb diet which caused heart disease. But actually he died because he slipped and fell on some ice and hit his head.

There is even an online copy of his death certificate which states his death as a “blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma.”

As many people have vilified Dr. Atkins as having heart failure, I do have to mention the death of Jay Dinshah who was the founder of the American Vegan Society in 1960. He was born to a vegetarian family and had become vegan. His parents had congenital heart problems and he died of a heart attack at the age of 66.

It makes me question if these heart problems in the family could have been caused by oxidized polyunsaturated vegetable fats???

There is a lot of disagreement and just pure lies about what is healthy and what is not healthy. It is your choice what you feed your family. But our children need the best nutrition to thrive.

My daughter was not thriving on a vegetarian/vegan diet. We were able to heal her cavities, uncontrollable crying, and failure to thrive by following the dietary principles founded by Weston A. Price and written in Nourishing Traditions.

To your health and wellness,

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Here are some warning signs that your Vegetarian/Vegan baby is not thriving. Like I mentioned in my previous post that I will be doing a series on why this diet is not optimal. When you are raising young “veggie” children you may be doing them permanent damage.  They are developing brains, hormones, bones, cells, nervous systems. There are consequences when nutrition is not optimal, especially when these children are fed MSG fake soy foods and other unfermented soy foods from conception.

I have close friends who are raising vegetarian and vegan children. It is my experience that children on these diets do not thrive. I have compiled a list of failure to thrive signs that I have observed from children following this kind of diet.

Signs That Your Vegetarian and Vegan Child Is Not Thriving…

• Colic and crankiness (my daughter suffered from this until we removed soy from our diet at 1.5 years old)
• Pale Skin with dark circles around the eyes (my daughter had this)
• Underweight (my daughter was diagnosed as underweight and failure to thrive)
• Overweight
• Constantly Hungry
• Speech Problems
• Behavioural problems (not just ordinary baby/toddler/child behaviour but behaviour that would lead you to think of autism or autism spectrum disorders)
• Developmental Problems (late rolling, sitting, walking and talking)
• Learning Problems
• Moody or lethargic (does not smile, play or laugh as much as other children)
• Candida Yeast infections
• Bloating and Gas
• Dental Caries and Decay, Crooked Teeth, Teeth with spaces and gaps in between
• SMALL teeth (I noticed a VERY BIG difference in teeth size in my vegetarian baby and her sister who had a more nourishing pregnancy. My veggie baby #1 had small teeth while baby #2 has very big strong teeth). My baby #1 has adult teeth that are growing in and they are much bigger. She has lost two baby teeth that are being filled in by only one tooth.
• Poor eye health
• Sleeping too much or sleeping too little (this is hard to detect among babies and toddlers as they naturally don’t sleep very well. But my vegetarian daughter was an extremely light sleeper and would wake as soon as she realized that I had left her side. My friend has the opposite problem as her children sleep more than normal kids their age. I guess my point here is to notice if your child’s sleeping patterns are different from others in their age group)

There are many reasons these symptoms occur. I will explain further as I write more in this series.

There is a great difference between adults becoming vegan and children born from vegan/vegetarian pregnancies. There are essential vitamins, fats and nutrients that are needed for proper development of the fetus and a growing baby. You cannot get a lot of them on a vegetarian diet.

Disclaimer: as a former long term vegetarian and vegan I have had some health issues. This is article is coming from my own health research and experience and is not meant as medical advice.

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This will be a series that I will be doing. I have friends who are raising children on a vegetarian and vegan diets and looking from the outside I see health issues in these children. The parents however do not see these issues.

Myself when I was vegan and raising my first baby I was very upset and offended when a holistic herbalist told me that my daughter would have health issues. She told me to just feed a little bit of meat to my daughter. I was in total denial when she said that. But she mentioned teeth problems and low and behold six months later my daughter was having teeth problems. I remembered this holistic herbalist when the health problems started occurring and wished that I had headed her advice.

Vegetarian Health Problem #1

The vegetarian diet is very high in carbohydrates. Whether you are lacto-ovo vegetarian or raw vegan you are consuming a lot of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are metabolised as blood glucose and contribute greatly to insulin resistance, diabetes and BODY FAT.

What types of carbohydrates do this?

• Grains, Beans, Fruits, Sugars

Through a Vegetarian diet I have become Insulin Resistant. I was continuously hungry for food and never satisfied until I was stuffed. I was feeding myself with bananas, raisins, pastas, breads, cereals, rice, and lots of soy.

Even when I wanted to transition to a more Raw Food diet and eating more raw fruits and veggies I could not understand why I was hungrier! But with eating more fruit I was causing my insulin to spike and then drop and therefore increasing hunger.

There are lots of Vegetarians and Vegans that are not skinny. Many struggle with weight issues exactly like regular folks with insulin resistance.

Vegetarian Health Problem #2

Carbohydrates also feed Candida Yeast.

There are a lot of people who suffer from Candida Yeast and they don’t know it. With the prevalence of antibiotic use in medicine AND in animal products, chlorination of tap water and high carb and sugar intake that there is a definite unbalance of gut bacteria. Yes, we are seeing more products on the market promoting live cultures, but watch those sugars in these products as they most likely have them!

Lacto-fermented foods (ie. Naturally fermented pickles, sauerkraut, kefir and natural yogurts) are not as popular as they once were. These foods used to be eaten at every meal to aide in digestion. Now pickles and sauerkraut are being mass produced and they do not contain any of these beneficial bacteria (due to high temperature canning methods).

What foods feed Candida Yeast?

• Grains, Beans, Fruits and Sugars (honey, molasses, cane sugar, maple syrup)

As a Vegetarian, these were the foods that I was eating every day.

Insulin Resistance and Candida Yeast are very serious health issues.

Insulin Resistance leads to diabetes and Candida Yeast attacks your body from the digestive tract and burrows in and makes holes in your G.I. tract called rhizoids. Candida Yeast has many side effects like bloating, allergies, skin issues and neurological problems.

It took over 12 years for me to actually identify what my health problems were. I would still probably be vegetarian if I had not had children and seen the problems that I had passed on to them. Sometimes it takes being removed from the situation to get the full picture. I have read many similar testimonials to mine.

Being Vegetarian and raising Vegetarian families is not as healthy as it is portrayed to be.

A question for you -

What are your thoughts on this?

Disclaimer: as a former long term vegetarian and vegan I have had some health issues. This is article is coming from my health research and experience and is not meant as medical advice.

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