You may have seen the headlines in the US: Sheila O’Leary, a Florida mother, was sentenced to life in prison on August 29 for the starvation death of her toddler in 2019. At 18 months of age, her son Ezra O’Leary weighed only 17 pounds — not even making it into the first percentile of the growth charts commonly used by paediatricians.
When covering the story, many media outlets dubbed O’Leary “vegan mom”. Investigators said that O’Leary told them her family ate only raw fruits and vegetables and that Ezra was given breast milk as well. His siblings, ages three and five, were also reported to have been malnourished.
Vegans and their supporters say that it’s unfortunate that O’Leary’s case – in addition to a few others that have made headlines over the years – is the only example of vegan parenting that many people have heard of.
“I don’t think that had to do with veganism. I think that was child abuse,” Deborah Malkoff-Cohen, a paediatric nutritionist, tells HuffPost, noting that the child must not have visited a doctor, as the issue would have been identified much earlier by a paediatrician during a well-child visit.
“It saddens me that many people will be scared away from raising their children on a plant-based diet because of these types of headlines,” says Dr. Yami Cazorla-Lancaster, a paediatrician who has fed her own two sons a plant-based diet for 11 years.
“I am very careful to counsel parents that raw vegan diets are not appropriate for children because it is simply too difficult for them to acquire sufficient calories for growth from raw fruits and vegetables,” explains Cazorla-Lancaster, adding that a child who is not gaining sufficient weight would be diagnosed with failure to thrive and treated by their doctor.
Malkoff-Cohen says that cases like the O’Leary’s “give vegan diets a bad name.” She notes that she has seen adults with inflammation, heart disease and insulin resistance all improve their health by going vegan, and believes that such diets can work for some people.
The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics supports “appropriately planned” vegan diets “for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.”
“I have had the privilege of witnessing many healthy, thriving vegan children grow up, and I have no doubt that children can be safely and healthfully raised on an exclusively plant-based diet,” says Cazorla-Lancaster.
Like using cloth nappies or commuting only by bicycle, veganism is an eco-conscious lifestyle choice that isn’t fully mainstream, but feels right to some parents.
“I have followed a vegan diet as a way to extend compassion to animals,” says Karla Moreno-Bryce, a registered dietician in Minnesota. “Both my kids have been following a vegan diet since conception, and it is very rewarding to be able to share this lifestyle with them.”
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