COWS ARE COOL: LOVE ‘EM!
43.
Ignorance
A Prerequisite of The Standard Western Diet
By Sienna Parker
I think parents either want to “protect” children by not telling them where meat comes from (since most children have a natural love for animals), or eating meat is so automatic for the parents, that they don’t even think to explain it to their children. I wish my parents had told me earlier where meat came from.
I help out with a school garden club. Of the eight children (all between 5 and 12) who attended yesterday, not one could identify the vegetable we were harvesting. It was a leek.
I guess ignorance is a prerequisite of the standard Western diet.
My sister was fairly young when she learned where her favourite food, beef, came from. She didn’t understand the concept, however of how we got the meat from the cows. She assumed the meat were the “spots” (the ones seen on cows used for dairy) on the cows and when the meat was “ripe” it would fall off and the farmers would go out into the field to gather it.
Sadly, when she discovered this was not how things were done and that the cows had to be killed for her to enjoy their meat, she was upset for the longest time. She was young and didn’t have any control over her diet at that age. She has long since forgotten this.
It seems a lot of vegetarians learned where meat comes from at a young age. Perhaps this is what helped them to make the change. I was 4 when my mum told me that animals were killed for meat. I can clearly remember that moment and how I felt. I was shocked and couldn’t believe the awfulness of what she was telling me. I even thought this cannot be true. I only kept eating meat until I was 13 because I didn’t like vegetables but the seed was planted the moment I found out.
(Sienna Parker is a vegetarian and lives in Catalonia, Spain)
Ignorance
A Prerequisite of The Standard Western Diet
By Sienna Parker
I think parents either want to “protect” children by not telling them where meat comes from (since most children have a natural love for animals), or eating meat is so automatic for the parents, that they don’t even think to explain it to their children. I wish my parents had told me earlier where meat came from.
I help out with a school garden club. Of the eight children (all between 5 and 12) who attended yesterday, not one could identify the vegetable we were harvesting. It was a leek.
I guess ignorance is a prerequisite of the standard Western diet.
My sister was fairly young when she learned where her favourite food, beef, came from. She didn’t understand the concept, however of how we got the meat from the cows. She assumed the meat were the “spots” (the ones seen on cows used for dairy) on the cows and when the meat was “ripe” it would fall off and the farmers would go out into the field to gather it.
Sadly, when she discovered this was not how things were done and that the cows had to be killed for her to enjoy their meat, she was upset for the longest time. She was young and didn’t have any control over her diet at that age. She has long since forgotten this.
It seems a lot of vegetarians learned where meat comes from at a young age. Perhaps this is what helped them to make the change. I was 4 when my mum told me that animals were killed for meat. I can clearly remember that moment and how I felt. I was shocked and couldn’t believe the awfulness of what she was telling me. I even thought this cannot be true. I only kept eating meat until I was 13 because I didn’t like vegetables but the seed was planted the moment I found out.
(Sienna Parker is a vegetarian and lives in Catalonia, Spain)
Cow’s Human Friends
“My friends are all badgers,
or leopards or wolves,
or foxes, or eagles, and how
can I ever reveal
to such glamorous folk
that I’m only a Brown Swiss cow?”
-Sarah Rath
“My friends are all badgers,
or leopards or wolves,
or foxes, or eagles, and how
can I ever reveal
to such glamorous folk
that I’m only a Brown Swiss cow?”
-Sarah Rath