On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 14:12, Dori Zook <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>...A local news show was
>interviewing the author of  "What, No Meat?",
>a book designed to help parents when their
>kids go vegetarian.  ... what really pissed me
>off was when the author stated
>vegetarianism is healthy "from infancy
>all the way through old age."
>Infancy? ... I just find it sad to
>think there are toddlers and pre-schoolers
>out there -- kids growing like
>lightening -- building their body
>frames with the help of tofu versus what
>they need to build strong bones and muscles.

Dori

Three points:

(1) Many people make the switch to vegetarianism during their adolescence -
 the time of breaking free from their parents' mores and of intellectual
exploration and seeking for truth.  Adolescents see that there is much
wrong with the world: misery, violence, cruelty etc. and they make the
jump - by analogy - from human misery to killing animals for food.  The
existence of ghastly factory farms for cattle, poultry and fish helps them
make that jump.  The one chink in their armour at this stage is to point
out that the hunter-gatherers whom they often admire (be they Aborigines
in my country or Amerindians in N America) are not only meat-eaters, but
they place meat eating and the associated hunting, sharing and feasting at
least as centrally in their respective cultures as we place food,
cookbooks, restaurant, gourmandizing, dieting etc in ours.

(2) I have seen may parents with well-formed faces (see Weston Price's
book for an explanation) who were brought up as meat-eaters but changed,
often in their adolescence, to vegetarianism.  Their children, on the
other hand, vegetarians from birth, have relatively pinched-in faces that
stand in sad contrast to the faces of their parents.  I have seen this
most clearly when the mother is carrying her child and the two faces are
close together.  The children, of course, will need braces in their teens.

(3)  Perhaps, one day, we'll see the book to help vegetarian or SAD
parents cope when their children go Paleo.

Keith