Given that you all will be gobbling up mass quantities of turkey this week, it's high time I finally posted my thoughts on a little brouhaha about meat.
While you're stuffing your gullet with giblets, we'll be happily eating our
Quorn Turk'y Roast. I hope there are leftovers to make "turkey" and noodles and maybe even open-faced "turkey" sandwiches.
***
I was on Twitter one day and my friend
@Zrecsmom pointed out the
daily poll on the Parenting Magazine website:
Is it cruel to make your preschooler follow a vegetarian or vegan diet?
Jennifer and I had quite a good back-and-forth that day about the poll. It was such a leading question. It is one of those "Have you stopped beating your wife?" kind of questions that has no good answer. As someone who doesn't eat meat, save a little fish here and there, and someone who is raising her two children the same, I was offended not only by the question, but also by the percentage of people who seemed to think I am being "cruel" to my kids.
Here's an alternate question:
Is it cruel to make a preschooler eat meat?
If we are throwing stones, then let me toss these in the pond and admire the ripples.
What is cruel is feeding your child a diet of highly processed foods, laden with fats and refined sugars, high fructose corn syrup, and dare I say free-flowing juice boxes.* Cruel because not only is there a correlation between negative behavior and highly processed food, but you are also setting them up for a lifetime of obesity and a higher chance of becoming a Type 2 diabetic. There are even instances of children being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes which
should never happen.
(
Type 1 diabetes, which my daughter has, is not a result of lifestyle choices and there was nothing I as a parent could have done to prevent it. It is irreversible until a cure is found.)
What is cruel is feeding your child Lunchables high in the afore mentioned bad things plus astronomical quantities of salt and cholesterol-laden meat. Cholesterol. That's right, there is
no cholesterol in plants. But person after person these days is diagnosed with high cholesterol and heart disease. People who could benefit from a vegetarian or near-vegetarian diet.
Without effort my cholesterol levels are picture perfect. Do I try? No. It's a result of good genes from my Mediterranean family (or perhaps food preferences for olive oil and other good fats) and the fact that I don't eat cholesterol-laden meat.
For me it was the wording of the question, wording that made it very leading, that I really called into question. Who at Parenting Magazine thought up the poll of the day and decided on the verbage? Were they
trying to be controversial?
And what if you don't eat a certain food for religious reasons. Is it cruel to make your child abstain in that instance?
I don't question whether or not someone chooses to feed their children meat or consume it themselves. But here is why
I don't:
- Meat production takes a large toll on resources. It takes a huge amount of water and grain to produce each pound of meat.
- Meat production also produces pollution.
- The meat packing industry is largely self-regulated.
- The meat packing industry is physically dangerous for many of its employees. Workers who are illegal immigrants rarely seek medical attention when severely injured for fear of deportation or losing their jobs.
- As long as a cow is standing when it crosses the gates to the meat packing plant, it is considered healthy. Cows, called downers, that fall down dead after crossing those gates are still processed and sold for human consumption.
- Government subsidies, including those for school lunches, keep demand for meat high and prices low. The government pays for low quality meat to be served to school children throughout the country. The government requires a certain amount of protein at each school meal. Because they have made meat for school lunches so cheap due to subsidies, it is costly for school districts to provide healthy vegetarian options that meet protein requirements.
I am not sure if you noticed, but I haven't said it is cruel to animals, though this is a reason that many people give for choosing a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.
I do not have a strong opinion on the matter of animal cruelty. I continue to wear leather and I am not opposed to the consumption of organic meat. We just haven't purchased any organic meat to serve to our family.
And you know what? If you would like to feed your children meat, I am not going to say that
you are being cruel.
In Print
I was a bit surprised a month or two later when a couple of people said that I had been quoted in Parenting magazine.
First off, I was never contacted by them for a quote or for fact checking. Rather, they lifted one of my many tweets and used that as a quote. And since I don't think I can go back in the archives, no doubt thousands of tweets ago, I am not sure if what I am quoted as saying is 100% accurate. I wouldn't question it if it weren't for the fact that the percentages and exact question differ between their website and their print magazine. (See the images in this post.) That and I have been quoted a few times and what goes within quotations marks sometimes is not exactly what I said (even though anything in quotes should be
exactly what one said).
Because the quotes are not available online, I thought you would be curious to hear what the people who are quoted as responding "yes" or "no" had to say. My responses follow each quote in italics.
YES 63%
"If you force your preschooler into following a certain diet, he may have issues with food down the line. I think teaching your children to understand the benefits of a healthy diet is important. But then again, they're in preschool, so let them live a little!"
-Forcing your children to eat meat or diet full of highly-processed food is more likely to give children issues as they grow up. Health issues. And trust me, the vegetarian children I know are living it up. Many have a well-developed palate and enjoy exotic foods and a rainbow of healthy fruits and vegetables that meat-eating adults would benefit from trying. They are often more open-minded about trying new foods, unlike some meat-eaters who eschew anything green."I'm a vegetarian, but I believe that becoming a vegetarian should be a matter of choice, never forced."
-Parents who serve their children meat don't give them a choice, rather they "force" their kids into that lifestyle. I doubt that many parents sit down and explain to their young children that they are eating what was once a living being. That that cute little calf or piglet at the petting farm will one day be steak or bacon. That raising meat takes a large toll on the environment, produces pollution, and wastes energy. Those children aren't being given a choice to do the right thing for the world."It is almost impossible to make a child eat what he doesn't like. But unless there is an allergy, I think it is ridiculous to do this to a child. I think it's nutritional roulette to restrict young children to the parents' whims when their little bodies need a lot of nourishment and protein."
-"Do this" and "make"? Those are strong words now. Who says that children who are raised vegetarian are made to eat foods they don't like? If a meat-eater has to make her child eat vegetables, maybe it's because she is not setting a good example. The children I know that are vegetarian love the meatless fare they are served. Trust me, my kids would not eat a food they didn't like either.NO 37%
"What is cruel about taking care of your child's diet? And their colon, and the environment? This question is just stupid."
-Exactly!"Parents who serve their kids meat aren't giving them a choice about
that."
-I still wonder if this is an exact quote from me, because I don't use italics on Twitter. I may have said *that* with little stars for emphasis. I actually said quite a few insightful things about feeding your children healthy diets that don't include meat, but this is what they chose to include in the piece."When most people think of a vegetarian diet, they think of raw and steamed veggies and fruits. There are lots of great foods vegetarians can eat, and the way you prepare them is important. There are also all kinds of 'veggie' alternatives around now, too, like veggie 'chicken' nuggets. It's not cruel to make your preschooler eat this was as long as you expose her to lots of options."
-Agreed. I would actually venture to say that some families who include meat in their diets have an even more narrow repertoire of foods that their children are presented with. My children eat a huge variety of foods. I remember once we were at a restaurant when my daughter was maybe 2.5. She was using her spoon to get every last drop from her bowl. An older woman at a nearby table commented, "That must be pretty good ice cream!" I replied, "No, it's broccoli soup!" She said she had never seen such a young child love broccoli soup so much.
Read MoreFor most of my adult life I had been an on-again, off-again vegetarian of varying degrees. I will admit that it is much easier to do at certain times in your life. My friend Shane lent me her copy of
Fast Food Nation
in 2001, I think, and before I finished reading the book I eliminated all mammals and birds from my diet. I do continue to eat seafood occasionally, sometimes more than others. Sometimes going months without it.
Shortly after that I saw Howard Lyman on Oprah. He's the rancher who won't eat meat and was eventually included in the lawsuit against Oprah. The reason he won't eat meat is an interesting story. His book is
MAD COWBOY: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat
.
If you have ever had any questions about the meat industry, you should read Fast Food Nation and Mad Cowboy. They definitely changed my thinking!
(This post is part of the
My Opinion Matters Monday series, sharing my rants and raves. Brought to you on Mondays...sometimes.)
*Ironically, I had never purchased juice boxes until my daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. We use juice because it quickly raises blood sugar levels during hypoglygemia (low blood sugar).
let me down and didn't have a simple gravy recipe. Do you know how hard it is to find a gravy mix that doesn't have chicken or beef solids or broth? I found a country gravy mix, not exactly what I wanted. But then again I was not going to go to a second store just to get vegetarian gravy mix.
