Le Figaro has just updated a forum originally published in February 2017, "Vegan Fashion: Why You Should Save the Children" by Professor Patrick Tounian, Head of the Pediatric Nutrition and Gastroenterology Department, Trousseau Hospital, Paris.
In summary :
"This type of feeding leads children to nutritional deficiencies and will suffer the consequences throughout their lives. "
The author is no doubt addressing oysters closed - oops! The comparison is incongruous ... - when he writes:
"The followers of this fashion called" vegan "(veganism) which consists of rejecting all products from the exploitation of animals multiply. However, this type of diet is not adapted to the human species insofar as it increases the risk of nutritional deficiencies. But it is when it is imposed on a child that this deviance of food becomes serious. " '
There are indeed the words "adepts" and "mode"; It is not very compatible with the rational. Will he be heard afterwards?
"Pediatricians are seeing more and more infants suffering from severe deficiencies due to the substitution of their milk for vegetable drinks based on chestnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, rice or soya. Deficiencies in their consumption can have irremediable consequences, especially when they reach brain development. These complications can even lead to death, as we have unfortunately seen in recent years. "
The latest example to have been reported in the press is a baby of a couple of Belgian vegetarians, owners of an organic store (we dare not imagine the advice they could give their customers) - see for example here.
Professor Tounian makes a fairly accurate diagnosis of responsibility:
"Those responsible for this deadly food deviance are not parents, but those who incite them to sink. Naturopaths, homeopaths and osteopaths are among the main prescribers of vegetable drinks. They use, often with talent, their status of caregiver to advance false certainties and thus convince gullible parents or simply sensitive to this way of thinking, despite the scientific vacuity of their statements. Industrialists marketing these ersatz of infant milk are complicit in this drift, sometimes seeking to encourage buyers to give them to infants ... "
Though ... to read the comments under some articles, one wonders if the followers do not fall into excess and, with the knowledge that they had to acquire to balance (try to balance) their diet, close Like ... ah no, not twice ... to the realities.
The above paragraph continues with a sentence which deserves to be better emphasized:
'... Parliament would thus be well inspired to introduce an obligation to include on the labeling of these products and on the sites putting them on sale a statement stipulating the danger of their use in infants. "
Why not take another step? What has been done for alcohol and cigarettes can no doubt be reproduced, with the necessary adaptations, for modern quacks. Information can also be made compulsory in maternity hospitals and prenatal and pediatric clinics.
Instead of distributing grants - whether directly, through tax credits or subsidized jobs - to associations, some of which are clearly harmful to the public interest, communities could also contribute to the fight against Sectarian food shortages by promoting monitoring and correction activities.
One must take the measure of the problem of these deviations, of a real nutritional maltreatment (see here another article of Pr Tounian). It is not only the death, from time to time, of a baby, but damage to the health and future of many children.
Children who should be entitled to the same attentions as those facing an obesity problem.
It is a public health problem.
Mrs Elvira Savino, Member of the Italian Parliament. In August 2016, she tabled a bill to punish parents who impose a vegan diet on their children for two years in prison. Is it necessary? In France, a couple was prosecuted in 2013 for "deprivation of care and / or food compromising the health of a minor per ascendant". Of course, the custody of the child had been withdrawn.
P.S. 1
Professor Tounian also serves as an interesting reflection:
"They are probably aware of the paucity of their scientific reasoning, but they often have no alternative but to accuse the experts of being sold to the agri-food industry to oppose it. It is true that a large number of doctors and researchers have links with the beef industry, and I am one of them. But let us be clear, it is the industrialists who come to buy the services of these scientists, and not the other way around. But in no case would a reputable doctor risk his career and his reputation for proclaiming theses incompatible with his scientific ethics. "
Would industrialists and other junkies of the charlatanerie come to "buy the services of these scientists"? One can doubt ...
P.S. 2
And during this time, the World published not one, but three articles making the article of Veganism: "Tomorrow, all vegans? , "Vegan eating without depriving yourself of chocolate mousse", and "Change of diet among vegans", two full pages on the paper version.
