Viva Locked Vegans… Animal, vegetable, or criminal? When the leftist, meat-heating media trumpeted this "news" in late 2006, I wasn't going to dignify it in the Daily Dose, but in light of the story you'll read in the second half of this essay, it's now quite pertinent. Perhaps you'll remember it - all the headlines were a variation of this theme: Intelligent children more likely to become vegetarian! According to the source material for these articles (a study of 8,179 subjects led by the University of Southampton and published in the British Medical Journal), kids who score highest on IQ tests at age 10 were most likely to be "vegetarians" by age 30… Of course, all the "meat is murder" web-news outlets (some of these, like NewsTarget.com, are cleverly disguised as alternative health sites) gleefully reported these findings. What they didn't stress, however, is that only around 4.5% (366) respondents classified themselves as vegetarians. And of these, 123 reported also eating chicken or fish! So really, what we have is a study of only 243 subjects out of 8179 (2.9%) who are true vegetarians. This is hardly a large enough pool to conclude a causal relationship - or even much of an association - between higher IQ and vegetarianism… Beyond this, there's the confounding issue of culture and politics. Though the study's authors claim to have adjusted for education and social class, I wonder to what extent they "adjusted" their data for the prevailing political trends among the highly brainwashed - er, I mean educated? Seriously, how would a researcher compensate for the political fashions of the affluent class - which is both more likely to produce children of higher IQ and most likely to be politically idealistic (translation: vegetarian)? Bottom Line: Is this study detecting a pure correlation between vegetarianism and high IQ, or is it simply reflecting the modern trend among the hyper-educated snob-and-smarty-pants set to eschew meat for political reasons? I already know the answer. And anyone who knows anything about how to raise truly healthy and smart children does, too. That leaves out the vegans. Keep reading… [ADS/BLURBS] Here's a news tidbit that, not surprisingly, came and went without so much as a blip on the mainstream media's radar (and no, I don't consider Associated Press "mainstream," even though huge numbers of stories you get from the major media originate there). It's an item from May 9th about a vegan couple who ended up in court… For their baby's death from malnourishment! The couple was sentenced in an Atlanta court - quite rightly in my estimation - to life in prison for the death of their 6-week-old boy. The first-time parents, who adhered to a strict vegan lifestyle (completely vegetarian diet, no animal products used), had fed their baby practically nothing except apple juice and soymilk since birth. The boy weighed just 3.5 lbs when he starved to death in late April. Despite their attorney's claims that they didn't know they were endangering the child's life, the charges they were found guilty of in a May 2nd Superior Court jury trial include felonious murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty to children. Yep, those vegans are so intelligent, aren't they? Clearly, though, they're not of high enough IQ to know that fats, dairy products, and other animal-based nourishment are essential for kids - especially if they expect to reach the age where they can be "smart" enough to become vegetarian in spite of everything nature tells them… | 
