Veganism

Aprilrose, your explanation 'I simply do not have the money' isn't logical at all. Meat is very expensive. Everyone should be able to choose their own diet (within reason) don't you think? There's no need to cook special meals either. You have the time to grow your own veg but can't change your set habits regarding food?

And why would you switch off the radiator in her room and take away her phone because she's interested in climate change

The radiator was using energy and creating CO2 and burning the earch according to ER . I have a perfectly good fire in the sitting room and she could join us there. She did not have to use her bedroom except to sleep. It does not have to be heated. My own bedroom isnt. It saves money and the planet.

A mobile phone uses lithium batteries which are expensive to extract and cause pollution of our lovely planet. Now I can live with the reality of that but as an ER advocate she had a respionsibility to realise that her phone was part of the problem. The same was true for her play station, her personal computer and several other gadgets.

I dont have a mobile phone by the way. We do have a second lap top which the rest of the family share. She was only being asked to be responsible and share like the rest of us are doing. MY CO2 footprint is very small and my DD uses more of it than the rest of us put together.

I'm far from a vegan, in fact a proud omnivore, but you do seem to have been particularly hostile to your DD in her endeavours. Could you not have been a bit creative and made some vegan curries, casseroles, etc., to accommodate her wishes.

There was no hostility and I was trying to be supportive but I did have to explain the reality of living in a family . I simply do not have the money. I work long hours. Thanks to the government I will be doing that for sometime yet so I cant be home to cook special meals.

Can I also be clear here? Not all of us eat curries, stews or casseroles. In my house my these things are rareities. Curries never - I cant deal with spices. I cook meat and three veg. I grow a lot of vegetables in my garden and we have what I can pull out of the ground generally.

I was not trying to make her life hard. She didnt starve. There was plenty of plain home cooked and healthy food on the table for her and plenty of fruit . She could have carried on if she really wanted.

So, she got whatever she could eat off the table when I served up.

I'm far from a vegan, in fact a proud omnivore, but you do seem to have been particularly hostile to your DD in her endeavours. Could you not have been a bit creative and made some vegan curries, casseroles, etc., to accommodate her wishes.

And why would you switch off the radiator in her room and take away her phone because she's interested in climate change.

Did you never question the orthodoxy when you were younger?

It's really very easy to be vegan now (compared to a few decades ago) with readily available foods everywhere. The only 'different' foods I buy are nutritional yeast (B12) and quite a lot of lentils (zinc).

Once I got over the lifetime brainwashing (to be a willing consumer of expensive, unnecessary products) and studied a bit of nutrition, I realised my 50 year vegetarian beliefs (e.g. milk for calcium) were mistaken. There's plenty of calcium in broccoli.

There can be no logical argument against adopting a healthy, considerate, planet and animal friendly way of eating.

I have had to think about this before commenting. I have had a similar experience with my DD. She came home from school having been taught about meat eating/clomate change and cruelty etc. in PHSE classes.

She was somewhat confused ( but so are her teachers). She wanted to be a vegan she told me as everyone else was doing it. I was worried because human beings are omnivoes not vegetarians or vegans. I am not going to pour forth on the misconceptions in all of this teaching but I will just say how I solved the porblem.

I told my DD it was OK if she wanted to try being a vegan however, I was not going to buy special foods or cook special meals for her. She would have to have what we all had because my budget does not stretch to lots of speciality type foods and no one else wanted to join her in veganism.

So, she got whatever she could eat off the table when I served up. It took two weeks before she decided that she would only be vegan when with her friends and would I promise not to tell?

I did something similar with the extinction rebellion stage she came home with last year. Itold her she could do this if she wished. We shut off the heating in her room so she didnt use excess energy. She had to walk to school ( 2.5 miles perfectly doable - no bus and no car and no bike as I cannot afford to buy her one besides, the roads are dangerous. There is a footpath ans a two hour walk too and from school will keep her fit). I took her mobile phone off her as that is not eco friendly either.

She didnt even bother to try! The walk to school was the deal breaker.

OK I sound an awful parent, perhaps I am, but I simply cannot afford to deal with these very minority agendas. We live as a family. We are on a budget. I work. Her dad works. We pay our way and lok after her.

If my DD wants to do these things when she is older, fine, her money ( hopefully she will be earing) and her home ( which again I hope she will have). There is plenty of time for all things.

Are you absolutely certain that your grandchild hasn't misunderstood the teacher? When I was eight I told my mother that the teacher had said we would die of lack of oxygen if there wasn't window open in the classroom all the time.

That wasn't what the good lady had said. She had opened a window because the classroom was stuffy and she thought a little fresh air would be good for us. She had then gone on to say that we needed air and the oxygen in it to be able to live.

That said, teachers do sometimes make ill-advised remarks about the dangers of smoking or whatever their pet hobby-horse is.

If a teacher is trying to turn a class into vegans or anything else then you are entitled to complain. As you yourself were not in the classroom to hear what was said it would perhaps be better to ask the teacher what she actually has said about being a vegan.

well, it's true. We close our eyes to the torture of sentient animals being killed like this and now we have easy options to eat meat- like food that avoids using actual animals. As soon as there is a market - the brains and enterprise will get behind it. Meat without cruelty. Good. Good for her teacher. I have been campaigning for this for years. meat is murder. The fear of those animals all because we like the taste of their flesh. It's not on.

Thank you Flygirl, I think I need to have a quiet word with my daughter in L She's not very mature for her age so I suppose its possible she's latched on to one aspect of a discussion on different dietary lifestyles and frightened herself to death????

Getting back to your original post and query, (and not arguing on here about whether to eat meat (or not) is a good/bad thing). I, like you, would be very concerned about the effect this has had on your poor GD. It's all very well for people to state 'this kind of thing simply does not happen in schools" and that teachers "don't have time to indoctrinate little Johnny" but if that is the case, where has this little girl's views and fears actually originated? Something has triggered this reaction, which is obviously disturbing her greatly, especially when eating out socially. She hasn't just made it all of this up? I too would want to gently approach the school to investigate further and, at the very least, to let them know the awful effect it has had on her. I guess the approach must come from her parents, if they are in agreement.

Laurensnan.....I agree... we need to be aware of the affect all this is on the minds of young children.

My granddaughter has started getting anxious about what we are all eating and worries her mum will die as soon as she eats anything even remotely unhealthy. My GD has started picking at her food and questioning everything on her plate. It's too young to be worried about what you eat. A child must needs to eat calories and grow. Obviously with a balanced diet, but that diet is the parents worry not the child's. Her school sugar free day, vegan day and healthy food campaign has just convinced her we will die simply because of what we eat each week. She can't see the bigger picture, nor understand it all like we as adults can. I want her to just be eating and enjoying her food and not having this worry so young.

Too add...many of the post above don't seem to be about the anxiety of children more about meat v plants

I would be having a conversation with the teacher concerned if it had been one of mine. I'm hearing that many young children are having a lot of anxiety about planetary concerns including diet. We as adults should be mindful of this and be very careful about how we speak to children about these matters. These days children have a lot of anxiety about all kinds of modern day subjects. We need to be aware of their fertile imaginations in my opinion.

Rubbish! It is almost impossible to see bacteria in a correctly mounted slide under the basic kind of microscope available in schools and certainly completely impossible in a dense substance such as milk.

Bacteria are difficult to see with a bright-field compound microscope for several reasons:

They are small: In order to see their shape, it is necessary to use a magnification of about 400x to 1000x. The optics must be good in order to resolve them properly at this magnification.
Difficult to focus: At a high magnification, the bacterial cells will float in and out of focus, especially if the layer of water between the cover glass and the slide is too thick.
They are transparent: Bacteria will show their color only if they are present in a colony. Individual cells present on the slide are clear. Regular bright-field optics will only show the bacteria if one closes the condenser iris diaphragm. This is due to the difference in the refractive index between the water and the bacterial cells.
Difficult to recognize: An untrained eye may have problems differentiating bacteria from small dust and dirt which is present on the slide.

Haweral, not eating meat or drinking meat is not an issue. There are probably millions of children who are malnourished because they don't eat enough fruit and veg. Why else do the kids cereal manufacturers add so many vitamins and minerals to all their products? As for a Dr saying you have to eat meat so as not to burn out, that Dr needs to go learn about nutrition! Many athletes are vegetarian or vegan, some of the top marathon runners, tennis players, ultra runners, weight lifters, race car drivers, footballers are vegan.

If transportation, the kill line, slaughter, maceration of male chicks etc is all humane and the animals don’t mind etc then it should be shown to everyone, including children. My main fear would be that the huntin, shootin types would love it.
There is so much misinformation and inaccuracy on here.

Your grandchildren obviously found something either amiss in the message or in the messenger and came to you for common sense. Schools should first teach educational skills, group interaction in a society and encourage personal growth. Interjection of personal bias is not their business. While they can teach the theory of balanced nutrition, the source of protein covers a plethora of ideas. Reassure your grandchild you are a source of truth for her. She may want to know there are ideologies other than her own, but her ideas are just fine.

My eldest son stopped eating after he went to school at five. The teacher was teaching the food pyramid and healthy.eating. Stupid woman put milk.under a microscope and showed bacteria to.them. At that age everything the teacher said was gospel and we knew nothing. He had always been difficult with his eating. Of course he refused milk and meat and at age 13 ,his doctor sat him.down and told him he had to eat meat in particular otherwise he would burn out physically and mentally. After that he started to.eat better.

A Buddhist monk approaches a burger food-truck and says “make me one with everything.”
The Buddhist monk pays with a $20 bill, which the vendor takes, puts in his cash box, and closes the lid.
“Where’s my change?” the monk asks.
The vendor replies, “change comes from within.”

I don't really understand the concern with showing primary age children the realities of where their food comes from. My daughter is not vegan, although she eats a lot of vegan food, but I don't understand the disconnect that people say it is fine for the animals to be used for meat and killed etc. but not fine to show anyone how it is done, or tell children what happens. Should we sanitise it? Pretend there are a few old animals out in the paddock and when they die we eat them?
People quote "human slaughter" and the animals are well looked after, so why the issue with showing that to the kids?
I think sometimes, deep down, there is a disconnect between what is on our plates and what happens at the slaughterhouse. We need to have that disconnect, because otherwise we would not want to eat meat. So many people say "oh I wouldn't eat a dog/ cat/ horse/ pet/ dolphin" but are very happy to stuff down a lamb or pig, despite pigs being just as intelligent as young children! We find it abhorrent that the Chinese breed and eat dogs, yet are quite happy that pigs are bred for us to eat. Why favour one species over another?
I grew up with a dad and grandad that were both butchers. We always had meat. I couldn't eat rabbit stew, because we had a rabbit. But really, when you actually think about the animal, and how it doesn't want to die, it makes it harder to eat meat.
Also, beef farming is terrible for the environment. 80% of soya is grown for animal feed. And red and processed meat has been proven to cause cancer, along with dairy.
So personally, I'm all for eating more plants!

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There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

He told me:
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie ..

? Yet you remain in my orbit...

You is kind, you is smart, you is important ..