photo credit: lilivanili

I am trying to cut out meat from our diet. Maybe not entirely out, and I’m still not ready to give up milk and cheese, but replacing many of the typical meat dishes with vegetable ones. This is a two-part idea, based on both my desire to stay away from cruelly treated meat animals and to keep the man I love living for a few more years.

So I plan out a vegetarian menu, I buy the food, I cook the meals, we all eat it as a family. Sometimes it’s a hit, sometimes it’s not. But I try to always make it as healthy as possible. So when I found out that there was a parenting poll about feeding kids a vegetarian diet and that most of the people who responded thought it was cruel to do to kids, I got a little peeved. How in the world is making an effort to feed your kids a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables cruel? When did fruits and vegetables and beans and grains become close to child abuse?

Multi-Minding Mom was the first blog I read talking about this horrible poll, and she made some great points about feeding kids and giving them food choices.

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

So what is so cruel about feeding kids a vegan or vegetarian diet? What exactly is the cruelty of it? Do they assume the food is awful, that the kids could never enjoy it, that there is just no flavor without meat? If so they must really be bad at cooking. Even before I started changing our diet, my kids were already in love with eating fruits and vegetables. There’s usually not a day that goes by without them begging for a green smoothie for a snack. Do they think kids absolutely need meat for a healthy diet? Have they not seen the approved Food Pyramid where meat, nuts, seeds, and beans occupy a small space together. You can get protein from all of them, not just meat. Protein does not have to come from animals only, especially with today’s advances in fake-meat.

photo credit: timbr00

I’ve started reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and if I didn’t already want to cut my meat intake down to zero I certainly would now. Pollan follows the commercially grown corn so common today, from it’s farm beginning to the dinner table. One stop along the way is being dumped by the barrel into the factory farms.

It’s a bit disturbing to read. I’ll admit, I was fooled by all the “corn-fed beef” signs and labels, thinking that meant it was better beef. Turns out “cord fed” actually means sicker cows, sicker people, and better bugs. Bugs that can kill us quicker than before. All because of corn being the staple of their diet.

Here’s how it works. Corn is cheap, so it’s pushed at the preferred feed for cattle. And because it’s cheap to buy, more cows can be raised. So instead of 50 cows stuffed into tiny pens, you can afford to shove in 100. Imagine eating a burger from an animal that only recently was standing knee deep in it’s own crap. There’s all kinds of bacteria floating around in there, and like crowded cities of years ago disease spreads quick and easy.

And then there’s the fact that cows are not designed to eat corn, it’s not what their bodies were made to eat. It would be like suddenly switching your diet to 100% Fruit Loops. Sure it’s edible, but how healthy are you really going to be? The corn also changes the ph in a cow’s stomach, which allows newer strains of E. coli to grow there. Strains that can kill us.

So to combat all of that, factory farmers have to pump the cattle full of antibiotics, antibiotics that gets passed on to us in the meat. What happens when you flood an area with antibiotics? It kills 99% of the bacteria, leaving the top 1% to flourish.

If the bacteria doesn’t kill us, the meat itself will. Slowly, but surely. Corn-fed beef is higher in the unhealthy fats, the kind that leads to heart disease among other things.

I would love to cut out the meat entirely from our diet, but I know I’d have a revolt on my hands if I did. I’m going to go slow, try to cut our meat down to only once a week. I want to make our diet more vegetarian, whole foods meals. Maybe even try a raw dish now and then. It may require dragging the other half kicking and screaming, but I’m going to move us into a healthier world of eating.