Violet's Vegan Comics

From the Foreword by Neal Barnard, M.D.: The writing of this book was motivated by the observation that many parents are unclear about how best to nourish their children at different stages of development. Well-intentioned parents like you want to do the very best for the long-term health and well-being of their children. They need help knowing where to begin.

Our hope is that by assembling an expert panel of doctors and nutritionists and by providing well-researched, easy-to-read information on healthy eating during childhood, we can help you promote excellent health for your children throughout their lives.

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Boy I wish I’d had this book when my children were little, then I wouldn’t have been misled by my GP who pleaded with me not to make my baby vegan, saying that children need dairy for at least their first five years! I was very young, inexperienced and, since it was way before the internet, there was no one else to ask. It was another eleven years before we had enough information to understand that he was wrong, and our transition from vegetarianism to veganism left us feeling better than ever.

But that didn’t prevent us being misjudged by another GP when I took my youngest to the doctor when she was about 11 because she was getting recurring headaches. I’d assumed she was suffering from migraines but as soon as the GP heard we were vegan she sucked in her breath over her teeth and said with confidence

“Calcium deficiency!”

I insisted that that wasn’t it, we get enough calcium from our fruit and vegetables, but she would not be dissuaded from her conclusion and sent us away after telling us to take some multi-vitamins, without doing any tests or examination. Some months later, thanks to a good GP advising us to go the optician and see if the headaches were due to a need for glasses, it was discovered that there was haemorrhaging behind her eyes caused by a benign brain tumour.

The world and medical practitioners are so much more enlightened nowadays though aren’t they? Thanks to the internet and such widely available information shared online by vegan individuals, groups and organisations. So you’d think that no one would be in danger of getting the kind of bad advice we got back then.

I was shocked to discover a few weeks ago that that’s not true. A friend of mine took her eleven and a half month-old baby for her ‘one year review’ by a Health Visitor at a children’s centre in Brighton and was told she should be transitioning her baby off breast milk and onto cows’ milk – for the calcium!!!!!!!

Thankfully my friend knows better but lots of people, like me all those years ago, will be swayed by this shockingly bad advice. That’s why this book is brilliant. Because it comes from the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, written by Amy Lanou, Ph.D. who is Nutrition Director of the Physicians’ Committee (or she was when this was first published back in 2002 – oh I wish I’d had it then!) and got her doctoral degree from Cornell University, readers can rest assured that the book can be relied upon. And it’s got so much! From a healthy pregnancy to healthy breast feeding to healthy nutrition for your child for the rest of his or her life, this book tells you everything you need to know 🙂

And it even provides you with a ton of healthy delicious recipes:

I bought this one for my friend, but now I’m going to get another one for me!

Author: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine with Amy Lanou, Ph.D.

Genre: Non-fiction, Plant-Based Nutrition

Recommended for teens and up

Format: Paperback (272 pages) and Kindle Edition

Published: February 2002

ISBN-10: 0471436216

ISBN-13: 978-0471436218

Dimensions: 15.5 x 1.9 x 22.7 cm

Available from the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine and Amazon

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nutrition, health, vegan, vegetarian, books, non-fiction, plant-based nutrition, children, raising healthy children, healthy pregnancy, nursing mothers, healthy breastfeeding, raising vegan children, food, healthy eating, healthy recipes, healthy recipe book, vegan recipe book

New from Honestly Books is Wild Goose Chase by Lavender Laine which is perfect for the teens to adults section of our Vegan Children’s Books page.

Lavender Laine, author of What’s good for the goose is not good for the panda, a rhyming story for little children, is a collage artist with a passionate opposition to vivisection. Her latest title, the non-fiction Wild Goose Chase, is not only a feast for the eyes but also choc full of information that every anti-vivisectionist should know. She has mined the brilliant Sacred Cows and Golden Geese by Ray and Jean Greek for all the text, which she has torn from its pages and pasted onto a backdrop of colourful images from many and various books and magazines. The result is a stunning visual treat designed to make the historical scientific facts easier to remember.

On the first page is the classic quote from Dr Werner Hartinger: “There are, in fact, only two categories of doctors and scientist who are not opposed to vivisection: those who don’t know enough about it, and those who make money from it.”

The acknowledgement pages follow:

And then it begins with a statement that it will go on to prove: Trying to cure human ills by experimenting on animals is a wild goose chase.

From thereon each page is full of information which was meticulously researched by the Greeks for Sacred Cows. Laine has chosen excerpts from the Greeks’ book which she feels are the most important to commit to memory. I’ve read Sacred Cows and Golden Geese several times from cover to cover and it teems with information explained in a way that is easy to make sense of for a non-scientific mind such as mine. However, there is just so much information in there that, even after reading and re-reading, I find it hard to bring the facts to mind in conversation with others and therefore am unconvincing in my arguments. That’s why Wild Goose Chase is so important. Laine has included only a fraction of the text from Sacred Cows – giving us less to memorize – but those well chosen excerpts explain clearly and concisely why vivisection is scientifically flawed and why it continues in spite of that.

It’s a kind of CliffsNotes for Sacred Cows, but much more eye-catching.

It begins with the history, showing that “True advances in medical knowledge has not come from animals.” It reveals that Nobel Prizes were awarded to the wrong people – those who ‘validated’ things in animals decades after they had been discovered by other scientists in human observations.

It explains how animal experiments have mislead scientists into thinking dangerous drugs were safe, and safe drugs were dangerous.

It explains that animal tests continue in spite of this because they provide a legal ‘safe harbor’ for the government and drug companies who can claim due diligence when things go horribly wrong.

It explains that, in the education system, original thinking is neither required nor welcomed; that editors and reviewers perpetuate the mass delusion; that money drives education and money drives research.

It explains that what is needed is a ‘voluble public outcry’ to stop this scientific fraud which is killing so many humans and animals. What is needed is for everyone to be aware of these facts so that they can no longer be deceived by the vivisectors’ PR machines.

And then it goes on to explain what we should be doing instead of animal experiments: the scandalously underfunded human-based research methods which really could make a difference. Look – there’s Elvis! ↑

Eg epidemiology, human autopsies, in vitro research, clinical observation, genetic research, computer modeling, diagnostic imaging, post-marketing drug surveillance. It’s amazing what they can do now (and Sacred Cows was written sixteen years ago so think of the even more amazing advances that must have occurred since then).

“To insist that animal experiments are necessary is ludicrous.”

“Why wait in the dark ages when the Star Trek sick bay is at hand?”

The book concludes with a call to action, inviting everyone to educate themselves and speak out against the mass delusion which is costing so many lives.

There is nothing in this book but scientific and historical facts which are easily verified by referring to the indicated pages in Sacred Cows. There are no disturbing images or descriptions of animal experiments – what would be the point? If vivisection could be stopped on grounds of cruelty to animals it would have been banned a century ago. Exposing the scientific fraud is the only way to end it. Educating ourselves is where we start. Buy this book and give it rave reviews! Enable every teenager to understand that animal experiments are not necessary and never have been; that they are actually harmful to medical progress and will not save human lives.