TOLD YOU SO! If the vegan pioneers were not such nice people, they would be saying constantly, "We told you sol" to the experts who are now busily discovering the truths that vegans have been living by for over thirty years. A browse through the journals of the Vegan Society, of the last 34 years reveals that vegans have been consistent in their claim that a diet of whole, fresh, plant foods, with a good proportion eaten raw, was best for the human system, that babies should be fed on their mothers' milk, that animal milk was not a suitable food for humans at any age, that meat and dairy products of all kinds far from being necessary, were sources of danger to be avoided for reasons of health as well as compassion. They were regarded as cranks, even by their vegetarian friends and those women vegans who decided to be guided by their moral insights and bring up their children without dairy products, were considered to be near murderesses. During the last few years, there has been a remarkable and rapidly accelerating change in attitude on the part of the experts who have been faced with compelling evidence, so that now nothing but ignorance, habit and vested interest, checks the growth of veganism. In an article in "Feeding Children Today", a supplement in "Nursing Times" of 30th March, David Potterton, Medical Editor of the General Practitioners' paper, "Doctor", sums up the position well. "The decision to exclude all animal products from the diet is usually taken for moral rather than for health reasons, the individual believing that it is wrong to kill for food, but clinical studies suggest that such a diet may well be healthier in many respects" He goes on to give details of the vegan diet, and to say that a child brought up according to such a regime "can expect to avoid some of the chief degenerative diseases of the Western world" . . . . "coronary heart disease"... "chronic renal disease" . . . . "diabetes mellitus" . . . . "cancer of the colon". He writes sympathetically of the difficulties over school meals and vegan parents might do well to send for the supplement to support their case when approaching school authorities. (N. T. ,4 Little Essex St., London WC2) Vegan mothers have consistently stressed the importance of breast milk for their babies, and most feed them for nine months or more. This they achieved during a period of world decline in breast feeding, and often in the face of considerable opposition from hospital and other authorities. Now the importance of breast feeding is being recognised, and as understanding of its merits grows, a very welcome swing is becoming evident. 8
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