GOOD Morning Britain viewers have slammed a mum who revealed that she is raising her 11-month-old baby as a vegan on today’s show.
Jess Pourasghar joined TV presenter and fellow vegan mum Sarah-Jane Honeywell on the ITV daytime show to debate whether it is wrong to impose your diet on your children.
ITV
And while Sarah-Jane says that she has allowed her children to make their own choice, Jess says that she will be enforcing a vegan diet on her son until he’s 18 with viewers describing her decision as ‘just wrong.’
Leading the debate, Susanna Reid asked the mum how she would react if at the age of five her son asked if he could eat meat.
Responding, Jess said: “Well I’d be disappointed obviously, I would tell him the truth about where it comes from.
“We’re going to be raising him to know exactly where it comes from and I’m not going to be showing him slaughter house videos obviously. The fact that you wouldn’t show a child a slaughter house video shows how violent and horrific it is.
ITV
“We want to bring our children up to be compassionate, we want to bring them up to be kind to animals, everyone wants their children to be kind to animals.”
However, pushing for an answer, Susanna asks whether Jess would actually stop her son from eating meat if he wanted to.
Jess continued: “Absolutely I would. I’d stop him because it’s still my choice to raise him at that age and every parent would make their decisions for him.
ITV
ITV
“If at five years old he saw someone drinking a beer or smoking a cigarette and said I want to try that of course I’d say, no you can’t try that.”
The mum later added that she considered 18 a “reasonable” age for her son to come to his own decision about his diet.
Viewers of the show were left outraged over Jess’s decision on how to raise her son, taking to Twitter to share their thoughts.
One wrote: “That poor child! She is depriving him of nutrients that his body (needs)! My daughter is 7 and knows where meat comes from and she still wants to eat it! Let the child make his own choices when he is old enough!”
Another agreed adding: “Not this again. Leave babies out until they are older. Cruel. Just wrong.”
A third added: “Veganism must be up to the individual, and babies should be fed a conventional diet until they are old enough to decide.”
Dr Hilary Jones also appeared on the show where he warned parents that they should be “very careful” when raising a baby on a vegan diet as it can impact on their brain development.
Speaking on the show he said: “It can certainly lead to deficiencies and there are many children who are deficient in iron in this country deficient in omega 3, deficient in B12 etc so it’s much more difficult to raise a child on a vegan diet.
“You have to be something of an expert which Jess obviously is, so it’s perfectly possible. You’ve only got a window of opportunity for full brain development in the first two years of life and unless you take that window of opportunity they will never reach their full potential.”
He added: “The omega 3 really important, B12, iron, calcium, iodine, these things you might not easily get from a vegan diet.
“Unless you’re careful those children won’t get their full development so you just have to be really expert in the diet that you provide.”
Elsewhere on GMB Piers Morgan branded a mother “utterly ridiculous” yesterday when she revealed she would be raising her child as a gender-neutral ‘theyby.’
And a man has received a dressing down after saying women should “stop whining” about the cost of periods.
