Cases of undernourishment among children associated with vegan parents imposing their diet on their young kids are becoming a growing problem.
In August this year, cases of children suffering from stunted growth due to their parents giving them vegan diet prompted Italian lawmakers to propose a law that could get parents into jail if they impose their diet on their kids.
Now, a mother from Pennsylvania is facing charges of child endangerment after her 11-month-old son became malnourished allegedly because she only gave nuts and berries to the baby.
Elizabeth Hawk, who had become obsessed with veganism, was charged on Tuesday, Oct. 4, with the misdemeanor court after her estranged husband noticed that their son had a severe rash from head to toe and appeared to have delayed motor skills, which he attributed to the child's diet.
Jerry Hawk, who brought the boy to the Fayette County Children and Youth Services on Aug. 16, said that his wife was obsessed with her diet and did not allow their son to eat anything but fruits and nuts.
The 33-year-old Elizabeth is said to follow a strict vegan diet and sometimes even imposes the extreme nutrition views that she has on her family. When asked about the boy's rashes, Elizabeth brushed off other family members' concern saying there was nothing wrong with her son and blamed the rashes on allergies.
Specialists found that the boy was indeed suffering from developmental delays and the fruit-and-nut-only diet resulted in physical deterioration in the young child. Court records likewise show that a physician who had examined the boy said that not treating the rash was not just inhumane, but it also placed the child at risk for a potentially deadly septic shock.
Because of malnourishment, the child could not even crawl and use his hands.
Elizabeth was charged with child endangerment for allegedly not feeding her son properly over several months and for failing to treat the child's rash with prescribed skin ointments.
The boy is now living with his father and is currently doing better. Two of the couple's other children are also with the father.
"He's doing great," Brandy Hawk, the father's sister, said of the child's progress. "He's completely turned around."
According to the Vegetarianism in America study, 3.2 percent of adults in the United States, or about 7.3 million people adopt a vegetarian-based diet. About 0.5 percent, or 1 million, are vegans who do not consume any animal products at all.
