My Kitchen Rules star Pete Evans, aka “Paleo Pete”, has hit out at the vegan parents of a child, who were convicted after depriving their baby of vital nutrients leaving her so malnourished she developed rickets and had no teeth.
The girl’s mum, 33, and dad, 35, who can’t be named for legal reasons, were sentenced at Downing District Court in Sydney to an 18-month intensive corrections order after pleading guilty to failing to provide for a child, causing danger of serious injury. They will also take part in 300 hours community service.
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Pete, who has been criticised in the past for his dietary proclamations, said people “should eat meat”.
“This is so so sad … Humans are omnivores … and we are designed to eat meat in our diet,” he said.
“Children should not be on a vegan plant only diet. There is a mainstream push to turn people off all meat or worse encouraging people to eat fake meat products (please read the ingredients) and the repercussions are going to be horrendous. Please use common sense and start by understanding what being human means.”
He continued: “If you choose to eat a plant based diet as an adult then that is your choice and go for it, and many people I know love this and seem healthy, but others do not do well on this approach long term, and if ill health comes your way then simply look at what may be missing, but please, please be wise with choices of what you feed your children.
“Oh and before someone sprouts a Mamamia story written by a 20 year old intern of ‘Pete want to feed bone broth to babies’ … We always stated breast milk is the most nourishing food for a baby 1000%, which the media decided to omit from their stories (but hey don’t let that get in the way of a click bait headline that is fabricated for an agenda).”
A number of people took his controversial stance to task in the comments section.
One wrote: “I’m afraid every major dietics association in the world, and most research institutions disagree with you Pete. I’ll think we’ll stick to our dieticians advice, that our children’s vegan diet is perfectly healthy, over yours.”
Another added: “I am really very disappointed how people take stories like this and use it for their own agendas and use it to confirm their own beliefs and stories. In every belief people take things to the extreme. I am sure there are a lot of healthy children and parents out there that are vegans or vegetarians.”
The baby was discovered at 19 months old when she had a seizure and was treated at Sydney Children’s Hospital and staff noticed that ay 4.89 kilos she was severely underweight and had no teeth.
The girl’s mum told a hospital doctor that the entire family followed a strict vegan diet.
The baby suffered from the bone condition rickets, which made her bones soft and hadn’t been vaccinated or visited a doctor since she was a newborn.
She couldn’t roll over or do some tasks such as pick things up with her hands.
It was later discovered that her diet had consisted of oats with olive oil, vegetables, rice milk and potatoes.
