Raven Prime
Member
There's plenty to support a vegan diet, it's not made of exotic things, it's made of removing many things. I don't really buy that argument. It's a matter of the person having the education to support it, get supplements, talk to a doctor and know how to create a balanced meal (and follow through). The problem is people like food trends and they like things that have simple rules that present themselves as healthy. Very few people need, say, gluten free diets but that doesn't stop the bandwagon effect. Even ethical eaters might be prone to not getting enough nutrition because again, they don't think about it, they think a vegetable heavy diet must be healthy and it's for a good cause.
In the end it's a mindset people latch on to, often for not so good reasons. I don't think we should do away with it (personal freedom and all that) but perhaps people need to be made more aware of what that entails and why nutrition is perhaps more important than weight, and personal ethics should be just that, personal and not enforced on children, pets or anything else.
Ethics are at the basis of society. It's impossible to not share your ethical views with your children. In fact I think it's very strange and hypocritical if you don't do this. If you think it's wrong to kill and/or exploit animals, you shouldn't make your kid eat butchered animals or products derived from their exploitation. Seems very simple and coherent to me.
As for nutrition, many people make lots of poor choices when it comes to nutrition. Animal products by themselves often are a poor choice when it comes to health. But rather than becoming deficient by eating them, you tend to get a lot of what you don't need. The problems involved with consuming them tend to be slow to appear, but very lethal when they develop.
All I'm saying is that, in a vegan world a lot of these things would be common sense and more importantly doctors and nutritionists would know how to deal with the 'risks'. I think that in general many vegans are very aware of what to eat and what not. But sadly there are always those that neglect common sense or indeed just jump on the vegan hype train. I've come across some vegans that are convinced they don't have to supplement B12 or even eat products fortified with them. But for every vegan like that, there are dozens of parents that will drink and/or smoke during pregrancy and/or will feed their toddlers junkfood.