According to multiple articles vegan diet may have serious detrimental impact on mental abilities - what’s your view?

Quotes and sources:

“veganism has been associated with adverse health outcomes, namely, nervous, skeletal, and immune system impairments, hematological disorders, as well as mental health problems”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10027313/

“Without question, veganism can cause B12 and iron deficiencies, and without question they affect your intelligence”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20200127-how-a-vegan-diet-could-affect-your-intelligence

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    2·
    7 hours ago

    An adult can choose any diet they like, for any reason they like.

    Mental development is a crucial area for child development from conception to adulthood. During that window it’s critical the child get proper nutrition.

    We have research on childhood development and the value of meat - Paper - Meat supplementation improves growth, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes in Kenyan children - 2007

    The references of Chapter 9 of the “Why Vegans have smaller brains” book is really illuminating here (I’m sorry for the title of the book, its a good book, but they went with sensationalism)

    Select Article titles:

    • Cerebral atrophy in 21 hypotonic infants with severe vitamin B12 deficiency
    • Importance of animal-source foods for meeting global nutritional, educational and economic needs
    • Vegetarian and Vegan Weaning of the Infant: How Common and How Evidence-Based? A Population-Based Survey and Narrative Review
    • Maternal Docosahexaenoic Acid Status during Pregnancy and Its Impact on Infant Neurodevelopment
    • Vitamin B12 Supplementation Adequacy in Australian Vegan Study Participants.
    • Vitamin B12 status of pregnant Indian women and cognitive function in their 9-year-old children.
    • Caring for infants and children following alternative dietary patterns
    • Vitamin B-12 from algae appears not to be bioavailable.
    • Vitamin B12 treatment normalizes metabolic markers but has limited Clinical effect: a randomized placebo-controlled study.
    • Prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency among exclusively breast fed term infants in South India

    it goes on and on… Basically, even in adults who ARE supplementing there are bioavailability issues, and micronutrient availability issues in substitute food. This is fine for adults, but for child development I wouldn’t encourage a friend to stay on a vegan diet until they are done breastfeeding, and the child has stopped growing.

    Childhood is messy, busy, and its hard to be perfect even in the best of circumstances, being on a diet that requires perfection or the child will have irreversible loss in brain development isn’t something I can endorse.

    I don’t like to under cut other people’s dietary choices on lemmy, everyone here (should) is an adult, they can make their own choices. But it is critical information that needs to be known for raising children.

    Let’s not forget the PRIVILEGE that westerns have in supplementing a diet, it has cost, to do it properly requires access to healthcare to monitor effectiveness. The western version of a vegan diet REQUIRES global logistics and shipping, it cannot be done (to my knowledge) using ONLY locally sourced foods (i.e. within walking distance). Many people globally don’t have access to ASF, and their development suffers. They have to eat local foods, they can’t buy out of season super foods sailed across the world. This is why we see the outsized impact of giving children one egg per day has on their mental development. These are the real victims of the war on ASF, having proper nutrition should be a human right with special focus being made on the global south.