I saw a number of articles in mainstream news publications on the parents who got life in prison for starving their baby, and the articles' equation of veganism=starvation annoyed me. I expect better reporting from Junkfood Science. Unfortunately, this time, in her post Teaching Our Children with Care, Sandy Szwarc does the same thing, saying "A baby was starved to death by parents who said they were adhering to a vegan diet."

The fact that the diet was vegan is actually not even an issue in this case. The child did not die because his diet was vegan but because he was not fed enough. He was starved. What articles like this do is promote a concept that vegans are insane freaks. This concept is simply untrue. The parents in this case had a number of bizarre beliefs and practices. They also followed a vegan diet.

In this post, Szwarc also details a seventh graders' field trip where they were expected to vote for or against animal slaughter. They were also given Vegetarian Starter Kits by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). I think this field trip was inappropriate on a number of levels. I, for one, would not want any school trying to teach my (hypothetical) kids about what they should be eating or how they should be exercising. However, I think this field trip was an extreme and rare case. Also, PETA makes an easy target for people who want to criticize vegans because PETA is so radical, but PETA members are not the only people who are vegans.

I can understand people's criticism of the parents and PETA (although what PETA says about the inhumane treatment of farm animals is largely true), but I cannot and do not support vegan diets' making the news in this way. I am a vegetarian and my husband is a vegan. We do not support starving babies, we do not refuse medical care and we do not believe in scaring the bejesus out of school children. Szwarc 's blog is often critical of the mainstream media and their fear tactics, but in this post she resorts to the same type of thing they do: she focuses on two extreme examples which serve to villify vegan diets.

As I said in a previous post, I have trouble keeping up on the Junkfood Science blog, due to Szwarc's prolific posting, but I read the aforementioned post last weekend, and even though it's several weeks old, I just had to say something. I had written a very supportive post about Szwarc's blog before, but she really disappointed me with this post.

Fortunately, I am not the only person who has spoken out against the way the media has used this sad story to villify veganism. Here are some responsible opposing viewpoints:

It was the parents' neglect, not the vegan diet et al

Op-ed in NYT - Death by Ignorance This page is great. It contains links to a whole host of other good responses.

Labels: blogging, the world around us

posted by Miss Rachel 6/12/2007 05:41:00 PM

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