<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> My original post prompted a variety of mixed comments which are below for those interested. Only one was not added due to the EXTREMELY long length which made it impossible to summarize, sorry. Some agreed, some posted regarding the cruelty of animals anyway stating perhaps that is the real reason for the diet, some think I'm just irritated, and some think I'm just irritating. I think, especially for "celiac's", it is extremely important to examine ANY diet with care before partaking in it. IN MY OPINION, a vegan diet excludes foods which we were designed to thrive on. While no animal products are allowed on the vegan diet the foundation itself is broken with an infants first meal, breast milk, animal product, which is in direct conflict of the vegan diet. I believe the fact that we do nurse our young, confirms the need and importance of animal products in our diets. Regardless of my point of view, I have enjoyed reading everyone's comments and wish you all good health -Patti ---- Hi Patti! Great questions! Below are some answers for you...let me know if I can help more. Thanks for asking!!! SNIP..... cut due to excessive length ---- Hello Patti, I am a vegetarian and not a vegan, but as I understand things the answers to your comments are as follows: The definition "one that consumes no animal food or dairy products" means no food derived from ANOTHER animal species. Vegan mothers would usually choose to breastfeed their children using the food evolved by nature for human babies, ie. human breastmilk (though I'm sure if necessary they could also use soy-based formula designed for babies with milk allergies who cannot be breastfed). In fact, there are plenty of studies which show that milk from cows (or any other animal species) is tailor-made for the young of that particular species and that even when it is considerably modified to be made suitable for a different species (eg. human) it is never as good as the mother's breastmilk. Several peoples of various racial origins find it inherently difficult to digest milk (other than breastmilk) and until recently (ie. advancing Westernization) it did not form part of the human diet in large areas of the world. It is also one of the causes of allergies. Vitamin B12 is important to everyone not just coeliacs and if there wasn't enough of it in a vegan diet, vegans wouldn't live to a ripe old age - yet many of them do just that. There are a number of sources of B12 which are non-animal in origin. My yeast extract, for example is high in non-animal vitamin B12. I'm sure people who are actually vegan will list many others. Best GF wishes ---- Very few people who eat vegan actually manage to swing it - you would be amazed at how many "vegans" I have talked to who eat soy cheese - contains casein and whey - or who eat things with sodium casseinate - (most soy products contain this) or other non-dairy things - derived from cow's milk. Hardly anyone knows that margarine - except for a couple brands - contains cow's milk Basic fact is that we as humans have incisors and eye teeth which were designed to rip and chew meat. Therefore, it is logical that the rest of our bodies are designed to process and grow using meat. Trying to deny this and eat no animal products is not healthy when our bodies were designed to do this. On the other side, cow's milk is designed for baby cows not for humans so I'm not advocating drinking it. Now I'll get off my soap box :-) ----- Patti, I think the vegan is just dedicated to avoiding dairy from other animals, not mother's milk. Also, being a vegan is a personal choice. None of the vegans I know would decide for their child that they too had to be vegan, and if they do I hope they have better luck than we did trying to just keep our kids off sweets :) So by the time a child is old enough to make such a personal choice she should be able to get along without milk fine, IF she gets plenty of milk and also takes her folic acid supplements so she can assimilate B12 and iron efficiently. But I might also add that when you limit the responses to your argument to those other than the reason that they don't want to hurt animals, you have eliminated the principle reason that most of them make that choice. Not just that they don't like the idea of killing and eating animals, but mainly because of the way animals are tortured when we raise them to eat. For instance, most commercially grown chickens now are raised with 25 birds in a small pen so short they cannot stand up. They have their upper beak cut off so they can't peck each other. This is to make the wings and legs closer to white meat, since when a bird exercises a muscle, that meat turns very dark. Hence when you eat the breast of a flying bird, like duck or quail, the meat is dark, not white. KFC has bred a chicken with very few feathers, legs they cannot stand on etc., and they keep them so crowded and dosed with penicillin I wouldn't want to eat one. At least we can still find a few free-range chickens. Some of the vegans, of course, are prepared for the short-comings and penalties of eating such a diet because of their beliefs. But also, if they study the issue and eat right, they can eat quite healthily in spite of that diet. BTW, I'm not even close to being a vegatarian, much less vegan, but I do respect those who make that choice. I just wish they didn't almost all wear leather shoes, and many drive cars with all leather upholstery :) ---- Oh, forgot to mention what raising so many animals to satiate our meat cravings does to the environment: 1. the constant methane gas given off by cattle, raised for either dairy products or meat, as they chew the cud is a big item in the greenhouse effect; 2. the unbelievable amount of animal waste every year is getting beyond our ability to handle, and in some states in the southeast especially the raising of pigs has absolutely ruined the water and environment, as have the immense number of commercially grown chickens in Arkansas, once a beautiful state, believe it or not :) Actually I would think that at this point we should all try to start cutting back drastically on our use of animal products, for us, if not for them. ---- Patti, Right on. ---- Patti- Hmmm, I'm not exactly sure how to respond to your post because the points you used really did not have much to do with the vegan diet. Yes, vegans avoid all things animal to include honey, eggs, etc. #1 Vegans can still nurse. There is nothing that says they cannot "feed their young" nor nothing that says a mother has to drink cow's milk in order to do so. We are the only species who drinks another animal's milk, and does so after it is weaned. Many if not most babies are born or develop allergies to milk, and it has been proven that milk is indicated in causing the many ear infections/problems in the young. Many babies I know have been put on soy milk because of the allergy problem. #2 I had pernicious anemia (B-12 deficiency) which was a missed indicator of celiac disease. Now that I absorb what I eat, I no longer have a B-12 deficiency. I have, too, read that vegans could be at some risk of B-12 deficiency; that is far and away easily prevented with supplements, not necessarily with meat. Vegetarians have time and again been proven to be more healthy than non-vegetarians at most any age. The milk industry has sold Americans a major bundle of falsehoods, not to mention the meat industry. I can tell you that I have improved celiac-caused osteoporosis by a vegetarian diet and supplements - no milk, no meat. It is also a fact that Dr. Dean Ornish's vegetarian, low-fat diet program is the only one that has been approved by insurance companies for treatment of heart disease. I appreciate the tone of your post and know it was well-intentioned. I just wouldn't buy all the propaganda that most of the food industries sell. ---- Bravo Patti, I'm sure glad you posted your comments. I've dithered about posting a refutation of these vegan posts. On one hand, I'm concerned about the folks who are buying this perspective. On the other hand, I don't want to argue with everyone I don't agree with. Your post, I think struck just the right balance. It wasn't antagonistic, but it sure set out a couple of important issues that folks ought to be looking at before they embrace a vegan perspective. ---- I'm not sure what you meant by saying that being vegan would make it impossible to feed one's child. Veganism does not exclude human milk to be used by human children. Yes, we are mammals, and we are designed to nurse our young. Our milk is intended to feed our young. Cow's milk (by not only vegan view) is intended for baby cows. This is a perfect example of veganism. B12 is not just a concern with vegans. It also concerns vegetarians as well. B12 is usually found in red meats. Solgar makes a gluten free, animal free, sublingual B12. Smaller amounts of B12 can be found in sea vegetables and brewer's yeast. The general principals of veganism are that animals aren't to be exploited for anything--whether it's meat or a product that doens't requiring killing the animal-for instance, honey or wool. It would be foolish for anyone to say that veganism is the way to go for people with celiac disease. It is merely a choice, partly based on moral or political beliefs. Nutritional quality of the diet, as it is with all dietary practices, is the responsibility of the individual. Knowing how to prepare foods to meet your nutritional needs and when to take supplements for insurance of actually meeting those needs is something that everyone, omnivore, carnivore, or vegetarian, must do. ---- your opinion is fine, but you obviously have a strong one and does "slam" or put down others who are vegan. And I don't beleive your facts are straight regarding a healthy diet, if one researches and does the vegan or vegetarian diet correctly, then there should be no deficiency in certain nutrients and vitamins and would be able to "survive", whether its from other sources of foods or supplements. I think you can let people eat the way they want to eat and is not necessary to start an e-mail war about this topic on the celiac listserv! ---- I'm sorry that you feel that way Patty. My celiac son has been vegan since he was born and it has done nothing but help him. My older daughter ate the Standard American Diet (SAD) up until that point. I saw major differences between the two. My son has never been sick, my daughter suffered the "normal"amount of illnesses as a baby and toddler. My son is now 3 1/2 and growing beautifully. We have all seen major improvements in our health since becoming vegan. I don't understand your comment about nursing our young. I breastfed both of my kids. The thing is, that mammals quit nursing their young and wean them off of their milk, even cows stop nursing their young. BUT, we continue to give our kids cows milk long after they are weaned from breast milk. That just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, people like yourself, don't quite have a clue as to the difference what you eat can make until you give it a try. You get so used to living with illness, diseases, aches, pains, headaches, heartburn, constipation, low energy,sleeplessness, etc... that you don't know what it is like to live without all of that. I hope I have not come off in a bad way to you, I just don't feel like what you had to say was anything worthy of posting to the list. Now, if you go vegan and eat whole foods, by all means let us know how you feel. ---- Patti, you're right. I'm sure you'll get tons of comments about this one. As celiacs, we are so limited. Why would anyone intentionally eliminate things from their diets that they don't have to? ---- I am not a vegan myself, not even a vegetarian, but as I understand it, same-species milk, i.e. breastmilk for humans is w/in vegan guidelines, but not milk from OTHER species (cows, goats, yaks, etc.) ---- Also not intended as a slam in any way ... I don't think the argument that we humans feed babies our own milk quite holds. Imagine, in that case, the chagrin of the mother with cracked/bleeding nipples (which can be easily resolved with better technique, but is fairly common in the early days with a first nursling). 'Help! The baby's turning into a vampire!' ---- Let me preface with, we are not vegans (my family I mean). If you insist on taking the definition so literally that you would exclude breastfeeding ones own children from the definition, I believe you must have some bee in your bonnet about veganism -- no offense intended. Looking at non-human aniomals who most would consider vegan, like rabbits -- they still nurse their young, however, as far as I'm aware, eat no insects or animal products once weaned. And your B12 comment is debatable. I don't know how widely accepted it is in mainstream science, but many doctors and scientists who advocate veganism for health reasons believe that B12 is made in your intestines if your healthy (I don't know off hand whether it's the upper or lower). Of course, being a celiac is not being healthy. And there are sea veggies and other more obscure veggies that do offer B12 which certainly if humans had a wide variety of food and didn't rely on animal products they would eat. ---- Thanks for your comments, Patti. I recently wrote a paper for my anthropology class about the human diet. Based on studies of chimpanzees -- our closest relatives -- we should have a minimum of 5% animal protein in the diet to maintain health and balance. The other 95% is, of course, plant derived. For those looking for more info, just check out books on the evolution of diet in primates. As for B12, all B vitamins are water soluable. If you only take it in suplement form, you have the most expensive urine in town. <-- This from my Nutrition class. :) I won't bore you with the details of how vegans must combine foods in order to get a complete protein. It took up too many pages.