Everyone should have the choice to eat however they choose. Personally, I eat meat. I like meat. I try to eat ethically raised meat, but sometimes, I'll get that diner cheeseburger and I like it. I'm fine with those who choose to go vegetarian, but some people take it too far and become fanatical. Nobody likes an extremist.
Take this recently-turned-vegetarian mom, who has decided she's going to make her daughter be vegetarian too -- just in time for Thanksgiving. Yes, I too have a vegetarian sister who makes dinner out of side dishes. Which ... good for her. More turkey for the rest of us. But why you'd impose dietary extremes on kids is beyond me.
Why the meat moratorium? She read Jonathan Safran Foer's book, Eating Animals, and decided that factory-farmed meat "is inherently diseased, mutated and produced through torture, there was no way I was going to let it come near my baby." Sigh. Yes, I've read The Omnivore's Dilemma, and seen Food Inc. I've learned from them and decided to make conscientious choices about where I buy chicken, for example.
What I find disturbing about this story isn't that moms get to make food choices for their kids. That's part of being a mom. It's the extreme, and kind of warped, logic she uses to make her decisions. It's all-or-nothing. Meat meat meat! Or meat is evil.
"After all, a year ago I would’ve been preaching the virtues of animal protein and the inferiority of vegetables," she writes.Why does one have to be bad and one good? What ever happened to eating a balanced diet, sometimes having meat, eating fruits and veggies, and letting kids learn about food and where it comes from and make their own choices?
It's all about finding a balance.
Would you make your kids be vegetarians on Thanksgiving?
Image via knm3290/Flickr
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Comments 50
Soooooo, if you were religious and were raising your children as religious people, would you and your husband say hey, lets let the kids decide if they want to skip church today on Christmas because we shouldn't impose our religious believes on our children?
People are vegetarians and often feel so passionate about it as people who are raising a religious family. I am sure your sister doesn't appreciate your demeening tone towards vegetarians and people who bring there children up to be ones.
Have some respect for other people and the choices they make for there own families. You speak of vegetarianism as if it is a horrible thing. It saves animals lives, which last time I checked, we all want to live out our lives and not be eaten. Respect, Kindness, Compassion. That is what VEGETARIAN stands for.
Anything that cuts out an entire food group is a dietary extreme, be it vegetarianism, low carb eating, etc. I think it is a bit ridiculous to make your child be a vegetarian, just like I think it would be ridiculous to make your child eat a low carb diet.
Moral decisions beyond being good people, they can handle themselves when they're older. Healthy decisions are my job.
And I think the author needs to mind her own damned business, and so does anyone who cares what others put into their body. Not your kid? Not your problem.
If any of you people think the way animals are raised and slaughtered is moral, you have moral issues. Animals are not raised in these grassy fields where they frollick around and enjoy life until they are executed for us. They are treated beyond horrible and if you think for one second that I would let my 2 and 3 year old make such a choice you are crazy. My children and your children have no idea the horrible things these animals go through, and I bet if you showed a child the inside of a slaughter house and then put a hamburger infront of them and told them this was the cow they just watched die, they would NOT eat it. I am making the best choice for my kids, they will grow up and make a good choice for there kids too and this planet. If it is unhealthy for me and my children to be vegetarians you are wrong. We are healthy, happy, and living without guilt because we do not partake in the killing of living creatures.
Life cycle in my opinion. But, its my opinion that I don't push on anyone. Just like everyone else SHOULD do, I keep my eating habits at my own table