Since when was this Bullshitmedia UK?

"could be reported to police"

"could be due to a lack of Vitamin D."

When there are only 3 sentences, you should be able to realise how stupid an article it is.

The fact that you WISH this is what happened is quite sad, for the child suffering obviously. Nowhere in the 3 sentences is it even mentioned about it being related to her VEGAN diet, or her parents, just that she didn't eat meat or consume diary --- that she is vegan.

Suprise suprise 2 million people are intolerant to diary, many of whom avoid meat for similar reasons and they aren't dying...I guess the last sentence is the best part of the mirror "spin":

"The body needs it to absorb calcium, essential for bones. It is found in meat, oily fish and dairy produce"

Or read the real facts and you'll find...

"Good plant sources of calcium include tofu (if prepared using calcium sulphate contains more than four times the calcium of whole cow's milk), green leafy vegetables, seeds and nuts. The calcium in green vegetables which are not high in oxalate e.g. kale, is absorbed as well or better than the calcium from cow's milk. Some soya milks e.g. Provamel, Plamil, Granovita are fortified with calcium. Drinking hard water can provide 200mg of calcium daily but soft water contains almost none. Other calcium rich foods include black molasses, edible seaweeds, watercress, parsley and dried figs."

The fact that the last time a parent was responsible for killing their child was SEVEN years ago definately tells you something!! How many meat eaters how killed their kids in the last seven years? Sadly enough it'd probably be easier to count the families...?

Nice try in diverting attention away from domestic violence towards children and other abuse which is going on by making it look like vegans abuse their children, real nice..

What are you talking about when you say "there are only three sentences"?. Learn to write. Do you mean there are only three sentences supporting the speculation that the vegan diet caused the rickets? If you think so, learn to read. Every sentence infers that veganism is unsafe for a growing child. The doctor makes an excellent point that vegan parents ought to be warned about veganism's risks for children. The nutritionist stated the fact that vegan nutrition for children isn't as well understood as the conventional sort.

Regarding the "real facts" about the levels of calcium in tofu and leafy vegetables; where are the studies that prove there are no negative effects on growing children, especially boys, from the phytoestrogens which are present in tofu? It really is food fad bullshit that tofu is a bulk staple in the Orient, and no-one has ever eaten it in as significant quanitities as modern Westerners do. And that is only one of the unknown variables.

Besides, rickets isn't caused by calcium deficiency, it's caused by deficiency in Vitamin D which is necessary for the body to integrate the calcium into bone. Vegan diets are notoriously deficient in Vitamin D because fish, milk and eggs are crucial sources of it in climates without much sunshine like Scotland. When you consider that a parent is neurotic enough about animal welfare to go vegan is probably also likely to be over-zealous with sun-cream, and overly protective of their child, keeping them indoors, you have a recipe for vitamin D deficiency.

There are no natural and indiginous vegan sources of vitamin D equivalent to animal sources that I'm aware of. To me this just goes to show how wrong veganism's claim to be some "organic and natural" lifestyle is. Macrobiotic diets are also ridiculous. Why should anyone base their tastes upon other people's allergies? I can't imagine anything more stupid. Food allergies are a problem to be survived, not fetishised.

>> "The fact that the last time a parent was responsible for killing their child was SEVEN years ago definately tells you something!! How many meat eaters how killed their kids in the last seven years?"

It doesn't tell anybody anything, and neither does your rhetorical question. Nobody has ever increased the risk of malnourishing their children by allowing them to be omnivorous, as humans naturally are.

How dare you accuse me of making political capital out of the suffering of others, when the animal rights movement constantly exploits the most emotive and extreme cases of animal abuse, without ever identifying the capitalist profit motive as the true culprit, in order to promote their agenda? I personally know a vegan who has a curvature of the spine because she went vegetarian before puberty, without understanding the complexity of plant-based nutrition. Now she's impaired in lifting weights, walking, and will face chronic pain in later life. Animal rights absolutism and its pretentious chic is absolutely to blame for the dangerous dogma that 'everyone should go completely vegan now' that leads to cases precisely like this!