I've contributed to the Orlando Sentinel's Moms at Work blog since 2010. The blog is changing content management systems and my old posts will no longer be available to the public, so I'm reposting them here, in the order that they were originally posted.
Sept. 14, 2011
Lots of parents have struggled with trying to accommodate their kids' nutritional needs with their own diets -- and wallets.
But few face as drastic a result as an Atlanta couple facing life sentences in prison after the Georgia Supreme Court recently upheld a ruling that their 6-week-old son starved to death in 2004 because the couple tried to feed him according to a vegan diet.
Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas reportedly fed their son, Crown, just apple juice and soy milk. By the time they took the infant to a hospital in 2004, he weighed just 3.5 pounds.
How awful. And completely unnecessary. I wonder how much research these parents, who were in their early 20s at the time of their son's death, had done about raising a vegan child? There's lots of information available, and none of it would have advised them to feed soy milk and apple juice to their newborn.
We're not vegans or vegetarians in my household -- we love cheese too much -- so I am fully comfortable admitting that this couple's story rubs me the wrong way.
Were these people simply overzealous about their vegan lifestyle and their son was caught in the figurative crossfire? Do you think they honestly just didn't know how to take care of their little boy?
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