Two boys have gone blind from an extreme vitamin deficiency, after eating almost no fruit and vegetables, another child is suffering from severe orthopedic difficulties for the same reason, and a fourth, 6-year-old child has been admitted at the Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital in Tel Aviv with a limp and bone pain due to vitamin deficiencies, Yediot Aharonoth reported on Monday.
The mother of one of the boys who were blinded talked about what he used to eat every day: “My son was a very picky eater, for a long time he ate mostly pitta with chocolate spread and cereal without milk. He did not touch meat, fruit and vegetables.”
The mother said she decided not to intervene in her boy’s diet to avoid fighting with him: “I was not aware of the dangers of eating like this.”
After a while, the boy began to experience headaches, caused by cranial pressure due to a vitamin A deficiency.
Today, she says, her boy’s diet has improved, he gets a vitamin supplement and his vision is improving. But the doctors say his vision will never return to what it used to be. “Our child went blind because of our ignorance,” the mother said sadly.
At the Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital, doctors treated a 6-year-old boy who experienced severe bone pains and was limping. They discovered that suffered from a deficiency of vitamin C. After inspection, they found that his diet and was particularly poor, consisting only of processed schnitzel.
Dr. Aviva Fatal-Valvsky, head of Pediatric Neurology at Dana-Dwek, related: “When we checked with the parents of two children what they eat, it turned out that one of them eats only bread with chocolate spread.”
Fatal-Valvsky added: “Kids are very picky eaters, and eating an unvaried diet based on a very limited number of foods, may develop into many vitamin deficiencies.”
