My five year old daughter decided about a two weeks ago she was going to be a vegetarian. We are a vegetarian friendly omnivore household (relatives have been vegetarians, friends are, we don’t feature meat in every meal, I have tofu in the house and cook with it, I know which Boca burgers I like - but we do eat meat and prefer our steaks medium rare).
This came up with her six year old brother in the car talking about where hamburger and bacon comes from and “can we eat bunny rabbits.” I think the bunny rabbits threw her over the edge. We were on our way to McDonalds at the time, and proving that ethics when you are five (or older) aren’t necessarily the most consistant thing, she did have her “last” happy meal. She’s also given into the temptation of bacon once since then, but other than that has held true. After talking to her, she’s decided she will eat fish (pesca-vegetarian) - she loves shrimp (and it makes it that much easier to make sure she gets protein) - although Brainiac4 doesn’t eat fish or shrimp, so it isn’t like we save ourselves a pan. And we haven’t given her the option of giving up milk or eggs (I think veganism in a child is difficult to pull off in a healthy fashion - especially if the whole family isn’t on board).
This has caused some consternation (though not much) at her corporate daycare. They’ve gone with the flow, fixing her cheese sandwiches each day. However, cheese sandwiches get boring fast, and peanut butter at daycare is a no-no because someone might inflate like a balloon. So I dropped off cashew butter at daycare yesterday (and I’ll drop off some soy dogs and maybe some chix nuggets).
I’ve decided she can discover on her own some of the finer points of her diet (I’m not telling her to skip jello, she can find that out later - we don’t eat it at home anyway, so it will be a daycare thing).
I don’t know anything I want to ask. I have a feeling this thread might turn into a train wreck, though.
I went vegetarian a few years ago. I thought and thought, and I came to this conclusion: A plant is no less alive than an animal. Plants will kill other plants (and some will kill animals) to survive. While they may not have ‘feelings’ (and I believe that many animals do not have ‘feelings’ as such, since such things as fish do not have the processing power in their nerve bundles for them), they undoubtedly have this thing called ‘life’. If it’s wrong to take ‘life’, then it’s wrong to take it in whatever form it is in. Obviously, as Mr. Spock once said, ‘We all “feed on death”.’; thus, it’s impossible to survive without robbing an organism of this ‘life force’. So I decided that according to my moral/ethical code, eating dead animals is okay. I do, however, think that a (largely) vegetarian diet is probably more healthy and that it uses fewer resources than a carcass-based diet.
But that’s just me. If a vegetarian were to come over for dinner, I would try my best to come up with a variety of things s/he can eat. If your daughter wants to be a vegetarian, more power to her!
By the way, some very good friends of mine are vegetarians (although one of them will eat deadfish). They also like vodka shooters. They found a brand of animal-free gelatine so that they can enjoy them guilt-free. I don’t know the brand, nor what the maker uses instead of hooves. But it seems that it’s available.
Aren’t people with ‘peanut allergies’ usually allergic to all nuts? If so, then changing to cashew butter might not solve anything.
One thing I liked to eat even when I wasn’t in my ‘vegetarian stage’ was a Greek pita sandwich. Basically, it was a Greek salad in sandwich form: lettuce, tomatoes, kalamata olives, red onions, feta cheese, salt, pepper and oil-and-vinegar dressing packed into a pita.
If fish is an option, there’s always tuna sandwiches. There is also a variety of soy-based lunch ‘meats’ that your young vegetarian can eat. Could you pack your daughter’s lunch every day instead of having it prepared by the daycare centre?
Oh, yeah – Boca Burgers are great! Especially with lettuce, tomato, and red onions!
Well peanuts aren’t actually nuts, so no not usually. There might be a problem if the cashew butter was made in a plant that makes peanut butter too.
I went through a vegetarian stage when I was about seven. It didn’t last too long though because I wasn’t part of a veg friendly family. Plus, between food allergies, and general pickiness there wasn’t much for me to eat. Good luck to your daughter though.
The cashew butter is fine. I checked with daycare before bringing it. While they are concerned about peanut butter, they aren’t concerned about peanut traces in other food which the peanut allergic child will not eat. (since my kids have brought home Reese’s Peanut Butter cups from the daycare Halloween party, I’d call foul on that one. Anyone who needs to ban their kids from other kids trace peanuts in order to survive might want to rethink having a daycare kid - food processed in the same plant as foods containing peanuts is pretty ubiquitous in baked goods).
Since her friends have tried to convert her to Jesus Christ, I kind of figure turnabout is fair play. She is free to share her ethical views with her classmates, they are free to share theirs with her.
I became a vegetarian 9 years ago, as I was finishing fifth grade, for the same reasons as your daughter. My reasoning was thus: if we have all these rules about being nice to cats, dogs, etc, and even horses, what the heck are we doing to the cows?
I continued that way for most of the next 9 years, managing to be remarkably faithful to my vegetarian diet. Okay, so there were a couple of slipups early on, but whatever. Only recently have I abandoned my high horse of vegetarian morality, when I heard George Carlin’s take on saving endangered species. Honestly, I don’t believe it’s any of our business to take up such a mantle. Species are born, species live, and species die. New species are born to take their place. Nature moves on. Anyway.
I’m still a vegetarian, but for purely health reasons. The one thing I still don’t understand is how anyone can eat fish and still call themselves a vegetarian. Under the JudeoChristianMuslim tradition, fish is not meat. Huh? Someone want to explain this one to me?
I have two nieces, 12 and 8, who went wholly vegetarian 5 years ago. The older one chose to for reasons I can’t totally remember, and the younger, who worships her sister, decided to as well. She has no memory of ever eating meat. They are rabid about it, read labels, etc., all on their own. Love those girls. (I’m a meateater.)
My daughter might be heading this way–she’s almost 5. She keeps asking questions about where the meat on her plate comes from (beef from a cow, bacon from a pig, etc.). Now that fair time is coming around, and her babysitter raises lambs to show there, she wants to know what happens to the lambs. And the ducks, and the bunnies, and do people eat ducks and bunnies? Yesterday she wanted to know where the animals are taken, exactly what happens to them there, and so on.
I’ve been matter-of-fact and truthful about all of it, and I would not be surprised if she decides she doesn’t want to eat meat one of these days. I guess we’ll cope, it’s not like we eat meat all the time anyhow and I’m not a bad veggie cook. But she’s allergic to nuts, so peanut butter as a protein source is already out. We eat a lot of cheese in various forms around here.
I agree that parents should be pretty wary about sending a nut-allergic child to day-care. But OTOH it’s not always possible to live the way you’d like best. We’re lucky that we can do what we want, and I’ve been able to stay home and keep her diet under more control than might otherwise be possible–but accidents will happen anyway.
Oh, I agree. I started my daycare conversation with “I know you guys probably won’t serve peanut butter, but would cashew or almond butter be ok?” It isn’t like I’m saying “screw those allergic kids.”
Spatial Rift, I figure that vegetarianism covers a wide range of things (sort of like Christianity). My closest vegetarian friend became a vegetarian at the age of eight (much like my daughter) and added fish when her kids were little. Her kids have genetically high cholestrol from their father, so they needed some “good cholestrol.”
Oh, I knew you weren’t saying that! BTW almond butter might be better, for those purposes, than cashew butter–people often aren’t allergic to almonds even when other tree nuts are bad news. I think because they’re basically peach pits. I haven’t wanted to experiment on DangerGirl yet, but I’m pretty sure she isn’t allergic to almonds, which is nice, since we live in Almond Central.
I’m Catholic, and I think it was simply a matter of sacrifice - considering that agrarian pursuits were the norm, and that fishermen we’re told, are among the lowest of the low. So going ‘meatless’ and allowing fish was a form of mortification of the flesh. I doubt that it ever really mattered except for the upper 5% of the population, honestly.
And if you think that’s odd - consider the capybara, which is apparantly a fish for the purposes of Catholicism’s ‘no meat on Fridays’ policy. :eek:
As for the OP, good luck to your daughter’s decision. I personally don’t see a moral reason to avoid meat (just as Johnny L.A. says) but I do accept that there are health benefits from a vegetarian or even mostly vegetarian diet. I’m just not willing to give up coooooooow. <drooling>
A lot of kids try to be vegetarians around that age. I wonder how many actually stay the course?
She might not understand fully, but you can start to explain to her that people become vegetarians not only for moral reasons (like herself) but also for environmental and health reasons (my two biggest motivators).
My 8 year old boy is semi vegitarian for the same reasons and by the same process. He told me a couple of years ago that he doesn’t want to eat something that can think. He doesn’t mind eating fish (and very rarely, chicken) “because fish are stupid”. Beef, pork and lamb are all out.
Oddly, he does eat some processed stuff but it is mostly fish based, come to think of it. I think his reasoning process is not entirely refined yet, and I think “sausages” are enough removed from “meat” for him not to make the connection.
I don’t comment one way or the other, nor do I cook specially for him. We don’t eat a lot of meat anyway and when we do it is always pick-out-able. I know that is not truly ethical for a vegetarian but so far he is not bothered by it. If he himself gets stricter then I will go with it.
I can also comment a little on the nuts thing. My son is allergic to all nuts including the non-nutty ones like peanuts and coconuts. In his case he had a bad episode which ended in an emergency trip to hospital swollen like a balloon from handling walnuts in a craft class. The school knew he was not to eat them but had not made the jump to “he can’t touch them, either.” While there are some parts of the episode that I am angry about (the poor response time and their failure to get him to the hospital till I arrived at school despite my orders to do so - it’s been dealt with, they won’t do it again.) I am not angry that he had contact with nuts. It is so hard for non-allergic people to understand, and just when you have dinned it into everyone around the kid, a new teacher or assistant turns up, and all bets are off again. It is also so hard to know what nuts are in. Pretty much all processed food is off limits if you are allergic to coconut as it’s used as a thickener.
He can’t not go to school or after school daycare, so we continue to educate his carers and most importantly him, but I think that one day he will get caught - it’s inevitable…
I wish my young relatives were as thoughtful as yours all seem to be. When my ickle six-year-old cousin was at last year’s Easter dinner and my grandmother brought out a big plate of lamb, Cousin said (clutching her favorite toy lamb), “What is that?”
Said my grandmother, exchanging a Look with her parents, “Er…lamb?”
“That’s funny!” she said. “Lamb [gesturing to her toy] and lamb [gesturing to the meat]!”
I have almond butter at home but elected to drop the cashew butter at daycare. It isn’t the allergy thing, its that cashew butter is more like peanut butter…and she hasn’t had anything but peanut butter before. Since she can be a difficult child, I didn’t want daycare to have the problems of introducing the most different new food to her. She ate the almond butter yesterday, and thought it was good, so that can go.
(Besides, cashew butter is devilishly good, and I really don’t need to sit down with a loaf of bread and a jar of cashew butter).
Its the same with the soy dogs and chix nuggets. We’ll give them a go at home first.
My niece said she was going to be a vegitarian when she grew up awhile back. She’s 5. Apparently her class was doing alot of animal stuff in school. A little explaining of how normal people view animals and about the inherent evil and outright nonsense of the animal rights philosphy and she was back to being a normal, meat eater who doesn’t believe in animal rights nonsense.
