Dear all:

This info may be too late, but I figure it never hurts to explore
additional help.  My husband is a clinical psychologist who was on jury
duty this summer on a very interesting case where the mother was accused of
sexual abuse of her son and the son was taken away from the family.  In the
end, the case workers had mismanaged many steps of the investigation and it
turns out that there were some clear elements of not understanding
different cultural practices - the mother was Italian and had been giving
rasberries to the son on his lower belly which were interpretted by the
son's school as something more - and the case workers jumped the gun
without actually conducting interviews with the teacher who initially
reported the situation and took the son away from the family where they
couldn't even find the son for several days and it took some incredible
length of time for the son to finally be restored to his home.

So, the parents sued over because of how the investigation was mismanaged
and the heavey handed approach of taking the child out of the home
situation.  Since my husband is a child psychologist, he ended up being a
foreman on this case because he knew what procedures should have been
used.  He was very impressed with the lawyer for the family whose name is
Paul O'Dwyer.  (We're not sure of the spelling).  Although the lawyer is
not particularly a specialist in "breastfeeding" he certainly is
experienced and has a proven track record in defending families who have
wrongly had their children taken away from them, which seems very clear in
the case of this vegan family.

Second, I haven't seen much posted about anemia, but as a former
nutritionist, I do want to point out that anemia, while common, is a very
serious condition in young infants.  The reason why it is serious is that
iron deficiency (even BEFORE progressing to anemia) can have an effect on
cognitive development. In addition, in our lead-filled environment here in
New York, it can increase the susceptibility to lead.  Kay Dewey spoke
about the two main nutrients that are first needed by infants, which are
iron and zinc.  The requirements are extremely high and are difficult to
get from an entirely vegetarian diet without resorting to fortified foods
or supplements.  Clearly these parents are well educated and I'm sure a
skilled RD could have easily guided them towards choices that would have
increased the iron intake and still fit withing their preference to remain
vegan.  Why they were not offered the services of a vegan-friendly RD is
beyond my comprehension.

So, to continue, why would it be that these requirements are so high?  If
I'm paraphrasing Kay Dewey's talk properly (correct me if I'm wrong - any
of you who went to the ABM meetings last year), prior to our developing
agriculture, the first foods that preagricultural humans probably offered
our children was bits of chewed up meat.  That's about the only
explaination for such a high requirement in iron and zinc.  As I previously
stated, the iron is important for cognitive development, and the zinc is
important for the immune system and for appetite.

Now, one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that the meat that
was probably offered back in the preagricultural times was not contaminated
with chemicals, was not fed corn (a practice which makes cattle quite ill
to the point of needing antibiotics to survive beyond six months) and was
not eaten in the quantities and frequency that present day omnivorous
humans often consume it.  We do have the options in our modern day society
of getting zinc and iron without ever resorting to a meat-based product.
Supersizing was not as ubiquitous then as it is now.  I'm sure that it was
a rarity when the hunters captured a large enough animal to gorge on meat.
I have to say the same thing about what the soy industry has done.
Cultures that regularly consumed soy products do not consume them in nearly
the same quantities that our soy-milk venti latte consuming Manhattan
population consumes soy.  My nephew, a soy-formula fed baby, now consumes
huge quantities of soy milk products and I'm a little concerned about the
imbalance of such a huge quantity of one food.

In terms of the food chain, I have been at the other end of the spectrum
while living in Africa.  Very high carbohydrate diet with very little
protein.  The other end of the spectrum also has its problems.  Children
there grew well up until about six months or so, when they were then
introduced to cassava.  Cassava has very little to recommend it as a food
source.  It is almost entirely carbohydrate, has little of the nutrients
found in grains such as wheat, sorghum, or rice - in this area was very
high in thiocyanate (which interferes with iodine absorption) and was very
low in calories.  The predominant deficiencies in young children were
kwashiorkor, some marasmus, and iodine deficiency (which impairs mental
development).  Some of the little towns would have 100% goiter rates (the
other more visible manifestation of iodine deficiency).  What they did do
in terms of food processing was to soak the cassava for several days which
did release some of the harmful thiocyanate and to dry and salt bush meat
and fish.  Fortunately, palm nuts were readily available so they had
virtually no vitamin A deficiency.  On the diet there, I found myself
ravenously hungry for sugar (and I'm not usually someone who likes sweets).
You could only find sugar in packets of a teaspoon and it was extremely
expensive if you lived on the local economy. Men were typically skinny,
women were often hugely obese or really skinny (as were the Peace Corps
volunteers after a few years).

In other areas of Africa where grain is available, they increase the
bioavailability of the nutrients by fermenting.  This does help young
children absorb the nutrients better.  So not all food processing is
detrimental.

Despite all the claims of various diets that are promoted by the "nutrition
industry" I think we are a long way from developing a perfect diet that
works best for everyone.  I think we are stuck with treading a delicate
balance with the contaminants that have entered our food chain and our
ability to access foods that have not been contaminated.  I am sure that
years from now we will have a better understanding of why some people seem
to be healthier on a high carbohydrate diet and others do better on a high
protein diet and we will no longer see our culture go through swings from
one to the other because we will know who benefits. And finally, the best
diet for us, is not the best diet for our children because their stomachs
are smaller and they need more concentrated nutrients than we do.


Susan E. Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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