If you choose not to eat meat, great. But if you do not feed your children meat and/or dairy and poultry products, you may be committing child abuse. A recent study [click header to read the article] shows that as little as two spoonfuls of meat a day can significantly improve the physical and mental health of children.
The study was conducted using 544 Kenyan children with an average age of seven. Kenyans tend to be raised without regular meat in the diet and subsist almost completely on maize and cassava.
From the article:
"There is absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans. There is data to show that," Allen said.
"Even when they were adolescents these children who were fed as vegans when they were young still had delayed development or permanently impaired development," she told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC.
Results of the study (Lindsay Allen is from the University of California at Davis) showed marked differences in physical health, emotional health, and intellectual ability. In addition, the children fed meat tended to be better leaders and more playful. However, the biggest difference was in physical development -- children fed meat were up to 80 percent bigger than those who ate the traditional vegan diet.
As important as this study is in understanding the role of nutrition in child development, I think we might be able to extrapolate an even larger meaning from this data. Many anthropologists believe that the crucial evolutionary moment in human history was when we began to eat meat as a regular part of our diet. This study would seem to confirm that adding meat to the diet can result in profound differences in physical stature and intellectual capability.
It will be interesting to see if this data can be reproduced in other populations. If so, we may be learning a lot about our history as a species.
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