In today's video Freelee critiques one of Meat and Dairy-sponsored Dietitian Abbey Sharp’s reviews; Dietitian reviews Ellen Fisher – her baby’s Vegan diet.
Freelee compares micronutrient, vitamin and mineral status of Abbey Sharp’s meat-heavy baby's diet to Ellen Fisher’s “unnatural vegan” fruit-based baby diet. Here is Ellen Fisher’s “What I feed my vegan baby in Hawaii” video featuring her son Sandy.
Freelee’s first video on Abbey Sharp’s baby's diet is on her new frugivore channel called “Abbey Sharp shows you how to endanger your baby”:
Freelee's Initial video on Abbey Sharp "The Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing": 
Freelee has now made two videos in response to Abbey's videos and both times Abbey has removed two of the videos in question. This is a great result and Abbey is obviously 'feeling the heat' up in Abbey's Kitchen. The following are screenshots of the now removed videos.
Okay, onto the video. As usual Abbey starts the video by paying useless lip service to veganism. This is one of her tactics to disarm her vegan and plant-based audience and make them more receptive to her message. Abbey firstly comments on Ellen’s son Sandy having only juice for his first meal. She says "I don't like the lack of fibre". Freelee agrees with Abbey and her statement “fibre is important our diets." Correct. Fibre is important for many reasons, however, Abbey critiquing Ellen Fisher on her son's fibre intake is very hypocritical.
Due to it being a trending term, Abbey Sharp posts a lot about #babyledweaning and shares her son's plates on her Instagram page. If we take a look at her baby led weaning plates we see many examples like the meaty plate Freelee shows in the video loaded with fibre-less constipating animal products. Baby E is clearly much better off drinking some fibre-less juice rather than a plate full of high fat fibre-less lamb, chicken and cheese.
After 'assessing' his food intake for the day, Abbey works out Sandy's nutritional status and confirms he is meeting all his nutritional needs. Yet, Abbey then goes onto directly contradict herself and say “but his diet is far from balanced”. This is coming from the woman who restricts her baby's fruit intake (refer to first video here.) Even though his nutrition is adequate Abbey recommends Sandy eats a bunch of hard-to-digest foods throughout the video. She fails to mention Sandy is still getting most of his calories and subsequent nutrition from breast milk. In the video he acquires most of his solid calories from Avocado which is said to be the ideal complimentary transitional food for babies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Below is evidence of Abbey limiting her baby's fruit intake.
In Abbey Sharp's own #BLW (baby led weaning) she restricts her sons fruit even though he displays a clear preference for fruit. As Freelee explains, this is not okay. Abbey is restricting a clear health food while other mothers are trying to encourage more fruit in their child's diet. Abbey Sharp is behaving like her son is going to develop some wild sugar addiction if she allows him to eat all the fruit he cares for. Ludicrous. Not that we need science to confirm to us that fruit is an important food for babies... but here it is - science shows that insufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables in childhood increases the risk of future chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6491117/
Abbey Sharp claims it's important to encourage healthy eating habits in the prevention of eating disorders yet she restricts clear health foods in her own son's diet.
Abbey is drastically increasing her son's risk of developing an unhealthy relationship with food. Science shows healthy eating habits are formed during infancy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2678872/
Abbey brings up b12 and the possibility of Ellen Fisher's son Sandy being deficient. She broaches the topic as if b12 deficiency is just a “vegan thing" when it is not. b12 deficiency is a widespread problem due to modern animal agriculture destroying the top soil. The Framingham study for instance demonstrated that nearly 40% of the US population had a low level of b12 regardless of diet. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...
Freelee speaks in more detail about b12 in her video. The lack of absorption of this vitamin is a huge problem. And the picture looks even worse when we take into account Japan and parts of Europe that have safe minimums double that of the USA and Canada. So that could mean a heck of a lot more people walking around deficient in b12 and yes the majority are meat eaters, not vegans.
Although Abbey already stated that Ellen Fisher’s son Sandy was meeting his needs she goes onto show concern about him getting enough iron. In her own baby led weaning Abbey often feeds her son cheese and continues to feed him dairy abundantly to this day, even 4 times in one day. Research shows that infants eating products made from cows milk that contain casein have a 30% increase in intestinal bleeds and therefore significant iron loss in stools. https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.109...
Below is Baby E's food intake for one day.
And on a side note it is estimated that about 70% of iron in breast milk is absorbed- compared to cow-derived infant formula where absorption is typically less than 12%.
Excess iron is a problem:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29070544
Sandy doesn't exhibit any Iron deficiency symptoms:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528681/
Next up is Vitamin D. So it’s quite strange Abbey brought up Vitamin D and didn’t even mention the sun or the fact that the whole family is tanned as fuck and living in Hawaii. Maybe Vitamin D would be a valid concern for baby E and Abbey living in Canada but not Sandy living in Hawaii. Vitamin D is called the “Sunshine vitamin” for a reason, because that’s where it comes from. A vitamin D supplement is not a replacement for the suns rays and some studies show you may be risking your health more by taking them.
A study on infants showed a minimum of 30 minutes weekly afternoon sunlight exposure, between 10 am and 3 pm, over 40% body area for at least 16 weeks, was estimated requirement to achieve sufficient vitamin D levels (>20 ng/mL) by 6 months of age. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28031546
And yes Vitamin D toxicity in infants is a thing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Abbey moves on to express an unjustified concern about Ellen Fisher's son's protein levels. As Freelee states in her other video, Abbey’s protein obsession is not justified by science or by nature. Too much protein however, is a problem. Freelee calculated how much protein Abbey’s 11 month old baby was getting with just one of his single flesh-filled dinners and it amassed to a whopping 54 grams of protein. Even the US nutrition guidelines for infants state that a 7-12 month old infant needs just 11 grams of protein a day so Baby E in just one meal is getting around 5 times that amount and from disease-promoting animal protein. Sandy on the other hand is getting it all from healthy plant sources and still about double what is recommended. The extremely high intake of protein that Abbey is feeding her baby is risking his long term health. And as a Dietitian pushing others to "eat more protein" when it is clearly unnecessary is just plain irresponsible. And potentially dangerous. This protein fear-mongering has to stop.
Here is a simple break down from the video Freelee made:
So as you can see Sandy (as a plant based vegan baby) is actually in a far better position health-wise than Dietitian Abbey’s meat, dairy, and egg-eating baby. It’s just a myth that vegan babies have to be more concerned than non-vegans, in most cases the opposite is actually true because we are simply not physiologically designed to thrive on animals and their by products. If infants get enough calories from breast milk and whole plant foods then they naturally thrive. Eat as abundantly from animal products and we see serious illness initiate in omnivorous babies.
So, no Abbey, a plant based vegan diet is NOT restrictive. What is restrictive though is limiting yours infants fruit intake and force-feeding them a disease-promoting diet heavy in animal products. That’s restrictive, and even worse, very dangerous. Please start educating yourself on optimal human nutrition and stop fear-mongering and misleading the public about a plant based vegan diet.
For the rest of the break down you can watch Freelee the Banana girl's video here.
A suitable hashtag: #savebabye
Learn more about Freelee the Banana Girl here. Freelee is a 13 year high fruit vegan who overcame serious health issues and lost 40lbs following a Raw Till 4 lifestyle. For a truly healthy transformational lifestyle check out her Raw Till 4 Weight Loss bundle.
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