Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

COLUMN: Vegan parenting is irresponsible

In the past month, Italy has become electrified with dietary debates.

The country is aflutter with talk about the vegan diet after a toddler was hospitalized with severe malnutrition in July. The 14-month-old child, who weighed approximately as much as a healthy three-month-old, arrived at a Milan hospital on death’s door after being fed a strict vegan diet by his parents.

During the last 18 months, four children have been hospitalized across Italy due to vegan diets.

In response, conservative Italian parliamentarian Elvira Savino is campaigning for a bill which would, if passed, criminalize parents raising their children on vegan diets.

The bill proposes seven years of jail time should a child die due to a vegan diet, four years should a child develop health problems due to the diet and a maximum one year for any parent found to be limiting their child to veganism.

Nothing as serious as hospitalized children has been connected to the vegan diet in the United States, but the proposed criminalization of the vegan lifestyle has sparked conversation here in Bloomington.

Forcing an infant to participate in anything as restricting as the vegan diet seems like a mistake to me, especially in cases where that diet is executed so poorly as to result in malnutrition.

While jail time for casual dietary restrictions might seem like an extreme measure, parents who deprive their children of nutrients should be held accountable. Depriving a child for no real reason other than the parents’ belief systems is an issue that, to me, seems equal to religious fanaticism, despite the good intentions of vegans.

In its purest form, being a vegan seems to be about a commitment to respecting the lives of animals and demanding honesty and accountability from food producers. All of this I can support. But like any initially well-meaning ideology, there are elements of the vegan creed that feel pushy, intense and condemning toward all those who do not follow the “correct” path.

While I support any adult who makes a decision for themselves, raising a child into a system of strict beliefs — whether that system is religious, like my own regrettably Catholic upbringing, or a dietary moral code like veganism — can be incredibly harmful.

There’s nothing wrong with teaching a child about the complexities of morality and what it means to be a good person. Nor is there anything wrong with teaching a child to be a responsible and ethical consumer. But the point at which parenting becomes forcing a child into a complex moral — and occasionally dietary — ideology is the point at which I renege my support.

Like any big decision, becoming vegan has its complexities, and not least among them is figuring out where to get daily nutrients usually found in animal products.

At times, it can be a lot to take on, which is why becoming a vegan feels like an adult decision to me.

At the end of the day, no child should go through life without experiencing chicken nuggets at least once — whether or not their parents choose to partake in those nuggets should be none of the child’s concern.

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe