More Positive but Less Harvestable

[Monica]

It had nothing to do with being vegan.

Do you know for a fact that is true? So the newspapers, courts, doctors, etc. are all lying? Misinformed, maybe?

The media notoriously twists facts. They grab ahold of 1 little detail and blow it out of proportion, for sensationalism. I just quoted some examples of this in another thread, but don't have time right now to find it. Stories originally appearing in Associated Press, for example, get their headlines revamped and made more sensationalistic before being presented on FAUX News or other US media. Happens all the time.

veganism + zealotry = harm

NOT

veganism = harm

Veganism is still part of the equation. YES... you could of course substitute any number of other things in there because the zealotry part of the equation carries much more weight.

guns + zealotry = harm

religion + zealotry = harm

But this is not true for all things. potatoes + zealotry DO NOT = harm because potatoes do not carry the same potential for harm within them.

Zealotry = An ethical dogma based on an absolutist interpretation of a philosophical principle on conduct.

Thank you for clarifying that you don't think:

VEGANISM = ZEALOTRY

Which is what I wondered.

I agree with the gist of what you're saying. Some things, taken too far, can be dangerous. Yes, I agree with that. Fanatics with guns are dangerous. Fanatics citing Bibles are dangerous.

So yes, I see your point. A fanatic can take a perfectly healthy diet and twist it and it becomes something dangerous, especially for a baby.

But, the point you seem to be missing is:

Those people weren't feeding the child a vegan diet!

First of all, they included cod liver oil, which means they weren't even vegans at all. The key definition of vegan is that animal foods are avoided. That's the definition of vegan. So they weren't even vegan. This proves that the media either didn't understand what vegan means, or they intentionally latched on to the term vegan, even though it didn't apply here, just because it was potentially inflammatory. They were capitalizing on the inherent controversy of the vegan diet to sensationalize a news story that had nothing to do with veganism! (Because, the parents weren't even vegan!)

What they fed that baby wasn't a vegan diet! Aside from the obvious fact that cod liver oil isn't vegetarian, much less vegan, not giving a baby what is necessary for babies - human milk or some suitable alternative to milk - doesn't appear anywhere in any vegan diet I've ever heard of. They gave that baby some components that are found in a vegan diet, but it wasn't a vegan diet.

Look at it this way: What if the parents had been meat-eaters, and were feeding the baby beef broth instead of ground nuts, and the rest was the same. The baby would have been just as malnourished! Babies need milk. The baby wasn't starving because it was given some foods commonly found in the vegan diet; the baby was starving because it was denied the one food absolutely necessary for babies: milk! The parents were obviously insane, to think that human milk was somehow 'not vegan.' And if the mother couldn't breastfeed for some reason (which I question anyway, but that's a whole 'nother topic) then there are non-dairy infant formulas available. But the point is that the baby wasn't starving because the parents were vegan and feeding it a vegan diet. A vegan diet for a baby includes mother's milk. So the diet they gave the baby wasn't even remotely close to what any vegan diet would recommend for babies. That baby would have been just as bad off, if it had been given an extreme form of the typical omnivore's diet. But would the media have reported: "Typical meat-eating family starves child" ?

I don't think so. If the parents had a SAD diet, diet wouldn't even have been mentioned.

YES! YES! YES! So what can we do to help prevent against an otherwise reasonable idea, like veganism, from being twisted in the mind of an insane person, or zealot? Any ideas?

Well we can start by differentiating between zealotry and objects of zealotry.

The term connotes use of violence:

zeal·ot   
–noun
1.
a person who shows zeal.
2.
an excessively zealous person; fanatic.
3.
( initial capital letter ) a member of a radical, warlike, ardently patriotic group of Jews in Judea, particularly prominent from a.d. 69 to 81, advocating the violent overthrow of Roman rule and vigorously resisting the efforts of the Romans and their supporters to heathenize the Jews.


A person isn't a zealot for feeling strongly about a particular issue or cause. A person is a zealot if they try to force that view on others thru violence, intense pressure, or some other unwanted measure.