Peter writes:

>P.S. Rather than colloidal minerals, which are surrounded by a lot of
>controversy regarding toxicity & absorption capacity, you are better
>off getting some seaweed or high quality, chelated minerals from your
>local natural foods store.

Pregnancy may also be a time to to put idealism/veganism aside. Seaweed is
great and may just do the trick (though it didn't for us, see below), but
high-quality animal foods consumed raw may be very useful to a pregnant
women. Shellfish and fish roe (from unpolluted waters if they exist) make
most any plant food seem like a nutritional joke.

I have been all too close to two miscarries in which the mother (my wife,
37 and 39 yo at the time) was eating a high % of fruits/veggies. During the
first pregnancy she was largley fruitarian (with regular cooked
exceptions). During the second pregnancy (100% raw), she started minor
spotting after a few weeks; the spotting stopped completely within three
hours of consuming raw beef (which tasted fabulous to her). Nevertheless,
she went on to miscarry on the same day in the 10th week as the first
miscarry. Coincidence? Perhaps. Like others who have experienced
miscarraige, we try to understand _why_ but the long and short of it is
that we may never know. It sure keeps us humble as raw fooders!

There is anecdotal evedence either way on raw and/or vegan pregnancy.
Perhaps the most comprehensive anecdotal stuff comes from Dr. Weston Price
(_Nutrition and Physical Degeneration_) and is well-summarized (and easier
to read) in _Native Nutrition_ by Ronald Schmid. Dr. Price could find no
support for the health benefits of a vegan diet, and among the "primitive"
cultures he looked at found a simple correlation between the % of animal
(esp seafoods) foods in the diet and health (as measured by dental health,
specifically, and other aspects incidentally). Incidently, he set out to
prove that vegan diet was best, but found dramatically otherwise.

We can not blame the miscarries on a particular diet, but we cannot ignore
the idea that animal foods may be central to human nutrition either. Melisa
is now forty, in the best health of her life and we are still trying to
have kids--and trying to include more (raw) animal foods in our diet.

It is a given that this post will prompt everything from scorn to dismay
from many on veg-raw. So be it. But there is another side to the story so
often presented here about how superior a vegan (particularly fruitarian)
diet is for human health. While we are welcome to experiment as we care to
with our own diet, our offspring (or not!) are at the mercy of our
nutritional ideations as well as a very toxic environment. If an oyster,
roe, bone marrow, lamb, etc. (raw, and naturally-raised, of course) taste
good to a pregnat women, how can we say they are bad foods. If they taste
good to children of all ages, how can we....blah, blah, blah.

I am torn btwn posting this and trashing it, and find myself inspired only
by the mention of children/pregnancy to post. I understand that this is
VEG-raw, but find nothing in the charter about VEG-only and much about raw
foods.

Cheers,
Kirt