Last night I attended a delightful lecture by Sergei Boutenko of rawfamily.com fame. Sergei has an amazing story. His whole family was sick--he himself was a diagnosed with diabetes at age nine. His mother, desperate for answers learned that a raw foods diet could reverse diabetes. Advised of problems with insulin and diabetic complications, the mother led the family in new "raw" paths. Soon neighbors were whispering and complaining that Sergei and his sister Valya were being neglected because it was noticed that they no longer ate junk food.
One day while the parents were gone, the two children, then age 10 and 11 were visited by a strange lady who came to their door and asked many questions about how they lived. The social worker wrote answers in her book. When asked what they had eaten that day, Sergei who had been forewarned of this very occasion by his mother, replied; "Oh we just came from Burger King and we had a Big Mac and fries." Had he spoken the TRUTH about eating apples, oranges, green peppers etc, he believes the two of them would have been placed in foster homes for the rest of their childhood! What a tragedy how backwards things have become that the traditional (SAD) standard American diet is totally acceptable but anyone who is trying to make better choices for their lives is considered to be practicing child abuse!
My daughter had a similar experience three weeks ago. She considers that she has fed her children a far superior diet than most Americans, but on Thanksgiving Day of 2008 her ten year old daughter became ill. The following Wednesday, still sick; this girl was taken to Urgent Care to determine what was wrong. As with Sergei, the diagnosis was Type 1 Diabetes! The doctor insisted she be taken to the Emergency Room immediately. My daughter and her husband have educated themselves to use natural remedies and now that they knew what the problem was, they wanted to try to work with it. They took their child home and got her blood sugar level down 100 points within the next hour.
The entire family was shocked when the local sherriff knocked at the door and insisted that the child be taken to the hospital NOW at the doctor's demand. The parents were told if they refused the sherriff would obtain a warrant for their arrest and they would thrown in jail. My daughter informed him that they had no insurance. "Who will pay this hospital bill?" she asked. "You will," he said "since she is your child." After some negotiations they were able to keep her home overnight but they took her to the hospital the next day.
It is good that people are aware of child abuse and try to protect children, but sometimes people's attempts to prevent child abuse seem to become misguided and actually hurt children as all my grandchildren in that home were traumatized by this most memorable event.
