MemeMachineGo!

According to the Fox News story:

The Swintons, who say they approach veganism as a religion, fed the child a diet of "ground nuts, fresh-squeezed fruit juices, herbal tea, beans, cod liver oil and flax seed oil," a complaint said.

I wonder if the reference to cod liver oil there is an error — obviously that's not vegetarian.

Of course it's a tragedy that this child has been malnourished (just as it's a tragedy for any child to go malnourished.) It's also extremely frustrating for the media to imply that veganism is inherently horrendously dangerous and that it was veganism per se that caused the malnourishment, rather than a bad diet which happened to be vegan.

Every so often babies or young children are killed by e. coli poisoning from meat, yet somehow the headlines don't read "Omnivorous couple poisons baby with meat."

(Via Metafilter, whose discussion of the subject was mostly reasonable.)