Vegans like to say that it is a perfectly healthy diet—more healthy than the biologically natural omnivorous human diet. While it can certainly be indulged healthily—if carefully managed with supplements, etc.—unlike our natural diet, it is potentially hazardous for pregnant women. Indeed, I reported a bit ago of a woman whose breast fed child may have died because her milk lacked proper nutrients due to a vegan diet.
The actress Natalie Portman has been a vegan, but now pregnant, she has gone back to being an omnivore. From the story:
A pregnant Natalie Portman has decided to give up being vegan so she can nosh on the food she really wants. “I actually went back to being vegetarian when I became pregnant, just because I felt like I wanted that stuff,” she recently told Atlanta’s Q100 Bert Show. “I was listening to my body to have eggs and dairy and that sort of thing.”The 29-year-old Oscar winner became a vegan after picking up a copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals,” but now that she’s got a baby on board, Portman says being a vegetarian is a better fit.
Good for her. She listened to what her body needed during gestation. Her baby matters more than “the animals.” Parents should not put their children at physical risk over ideology or belief.
And since when is eating eggs and milk “vegetarian?” I think the proper term is lacto-vegetarian. But I quibble.
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