UCLA The Most Vegan-Friendly College in America

• Dr Rosset, I have been vegan for 10+ years and my health is fine. Getting b12 isn't that hard. You claim that some people can't digest plants properly but humans aren't made to eat meat. That's why we cook it. Real meat eaters and hunters have the enzymes to eat raw meat after the kill. As far as parents who are raising unhealthy kids I would say I'm ashamed they haven't properly learned how to live a healthy vegan diet for their children and that, unfortunately, not all vegans are intelligent people. You can be vegan drinking coca-cola and corn pops, so vegan doesn't mean healthy unless it's done properly. If you have children I'd be more worried about the conspiracy theories you teach them over their diet though.

• Respectfully, Dr. Rosen, you are direly incorrect about both the health claims and claims of cultism. While people CAN be vegans and eat poorly, most educated vegans take their B12 supplements and many, like myself, eat minimal amounts of soy -- instead eating rice and beans, nuts and dark greens for protein and calcium. Myriad studies, including the China Study,have demonstrated the health benefits of a well-rounded vegan diet. Many of your claims echo those of lobbists for animal agriculture, miseducating people to believe they need massive amounts of protein and dairy, when infact this leads to heart disease and poor immune sytems as well as, yes, deteriation of the bones. Fish is really the only healthy meat, but the fish supply has been hopelessly compromised. Furthermore, contrary to your claims, soy is transported to feed farm animals -- this is food that couple feed local human populations while cutting out "the middle man" of the factory farmed animal -- cutting out the fuel used for transport and the middle man. Although I agree that overconsumption of soy is not ideal, your negatively claims are grossly exaggerated. As for other meats, my colleagues in the neighboring biology department at our Unversity have explained that meat is merely an unhealthy shortcut to achieving nutrients that could be derived from healthier sources. Veganism is an educated and compassionate personal or political decision. In contrast, cults have monetary and self-serving agendas and are led by charismatic leaders. Most vegans come to their realizations about health, the environment and concern for animals on their own and have the challenge of navigated a non-vegan world. What Hitler did or didn't eat is irrelevant to contempory vegans and vegan diets. Vegans come from a place of consciousness and concern for others, which is obviously not where Hitler was coming from. This is a very tired claim, a strawman in used by animal agriculture propogandists. Furthermore, many vegans are not devote followers of PETA, but actually rather critical of their "welfarist" and self-promoting approach. Your assumptions are stereotypes and ill conceived. Ultimately, as far as health is concerned, people need to learn what foods are best for their bodies, are local to their environs and then break through the significant misinformation out there, propogated by persons like the poster above.

• may i ask where u got this information?

• Remember that all cults start by removing meat from the diet because without VB12 the brain becomes irrational and overly emotional in its response. This makes these people easily led. This is a cult movement as evidenced by their own responses to anyone who states the opposite. When one of their own members discovered her health going downhill on the vegan diet she was pepper sprayed when she tried to present her personal research at the Animal rights conferences. Before you advocate a vegan diet you had better read up on the consequences to young children. The dark side includes death, damage to internal organs and the bones. For boys the soy is a real problem and its the only plant that comes close to the complex proteins found in meat. This concept for animal rights comes from Hitler who used it against his opposition. Singer the leader of the animal rights last article in the New York Times called on all of our young people to neuter themselves and then party down until the last human being dies out. The main identifier of a cult is that it requires you to remove meat from your diet on the pretext that it is cleansing. The real purpose in having you stop eating meat is because meat rebuilds the brain through a balance of complex proteins and essential nutrients in combination with VB12. When you are low in VB12 the brain becomes irrational and overly emotional. The vegan diet can be devastating to young children. In a heartbreaking case a 12-year-old girl in Scotland was admitted to a hospital after a life-long vegan diet left her with the spine of an 80-year-old. Raised without the nutrients that come from milk and meat since birth,she developed a severe case of rickets (a degenerative bone condition) and numerous bone fractures. In the US a 15-month-old child was taken into foster care after a strict vegan diet left her with internal injuries, broken bones, missing teeth, and rickets. Two more vegan children died from similar complications in the US. In Florida, a 5-month-old girl was still at newborn weight when she died from malnutrition. Her siblings were severely malnourished, and at least two had developed rickets on vegan diets. A 6-week-old Atlanta vegan baby died last year and these incidences are increasing in vegan raised children. A strict vegan diet lacks vitamin B12, found only in animal foods; usable vitamins A and D, found in meat, fish, eggs and butter; and necessary minerals like calcium and zinc. When babies are deprived of all these nutrients, they will suffer from retarded growth, rickets and nerve damage. As animal activists tout meatless diets note that 2 out of 5 human beings cannot digest plant protein especially children. Yet vegan activists at PETA and the woefully misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) continue to push vegan diets on children. 12 million infants and young children die each year in developing countries from complications of marasmus (protein- deficiency) and kwashiorkor (severe protein deficiency). Autopsies of children dying of kwashiorkor and marasmus show pancreatic atrophy or fibrosis and fatty changes or fibrosis in the liver. We are now finding these problems in American children of strict vegan parents. Malnutrition is one of the many risks when raising infants on a vegan diet. The digestion of soy during pregnancy has become a growing controversy. A new study of babies born to vegetarian mothers showed that baby boys had a five-fold risk of hypospadias, a birth defect of the sexual organs according to research stated by Jane Phillimore. Inappropriate hormone levels caused by a high intake of soy during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy can cause damage to the fetus�s developing brain.� Research has shown that soy-formula contains approximately the same amount of estrogen found in five birth control pills. Imagine the effect this has on children, not to mention baby boys. �These babies� isoflavone levels were found to be from 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than in non-soy fed infants,� according to http://www.mercola.com. Soybean production is also killing off the Brazilian rainforest faster than any other operation due to need for infrastructure and high processing plants. This soy is traveling the world for the increase demand for vegan diets not for animal feed. The only sustainable protein development comes from animals who turn grasses into high quality protein for human beings. There is no scientific proof that a vegan diet keeps you healthy and there is more than enough proof that such a diet is detrimental to infants, young children and pregnant women. As for animal fats versus vegetable oils it is clear the culprit is in the vegetable oils not animal fat. The concept for good health is moderation in all foods and remove sugar and highly processed carbs from your diet. Not meat, milk, eggs or fish as we were originally designed by nature to do so.

• The menu listed isn't a vegan menu and the items listed as 'vegan' are generic items found in any college school cafeteria, nothing really to write home about.

• A Holiday Thought... Aren't humans amazing? They kill wildlife - birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed. Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for "Peace on Earth." ~Revised Preface to Old MacDonald's Factory Farm by C. David Coates~ _____________ Anyone can break this cycle of violence! Everyone has the power to choose compassion! Please visit these websites to align your core values with life affirming choices: veganvideo.org & tryveg.com

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