Best Reasons to Go Vegetarian

Under the general heading of “nutrition” we’ve examined how to get the kids to eat vegetables, taken a look at how big food producers subvert our best nutrition goals through targeted advertising, how those same corporations once subverted the AMA to claim there’s no relation between diet and health, and how the best “animal protein” for infants comes comes directly from Mom.

The great blog One Big Health Nut has a post entitled Ten Great Reasons to Become a Vegetarian that just might help to push some of those kids who are toying with the idea all the way over the line. If Mom or Grandma were to help reinforce these reasons at home, that is. Why, a Grandma just might end up with a grandchild (like a couple of mine!) who eats bell peppers and whole tomatoes like apples, shuns any bread with no color, and subverts their school, scout and summer camp buddies to veggieburgers and veggie dogs.

Of Health Nut’s reasons, the ones that have worked best with my kids and grandchildren were #4: Save the life of many animals, #8: Help the environment, and #10: Vegetarian diets are healthier. Mad Cow and e.coli infection (Health Nut’s #1) are great reasons to avoid meat, but kids generally don’t tend to worry about such things much. They worry about obesity - they all know fat kids in their schools, and don’t want to be them - the environment, and (most of all for primary schoolers) animal welfare.

Go on over to One Big Health Nut and get the whole list! It’s worth printing out and putting up on the fridge with magnets. I did!

Ten Great Reasons to Become a Vegetarian

Filed under Vegetarian, Diet, Green Choices, Vegetables, Family Life, Nutrition, Child-Parent Relationships | Comment (0)

Responsible Parenthood: The Diaper Deal

I had two babies in diapers before I was 20. The hospital sent #2 home with several boxes of a nifty new product called “Pampers.” Disposable diapers the baby uses once before they go to the landfill to take up space for 500 years! I thought they were totally cool. Until I got home and tried to fit them on my newborn boy-child.

Perhaps first time mothers don’t know this, but there’s a difference between girl babies and boy babies. My girl had ample hips and chubby legs, never had a problem fitting diapers - cloth or disposables - on her. My boy’s little bottom end came to a point. No hips, spindly legs, and a pee mechanism that didn’t care which way it was pointed. This was before disposable manufacturers figured out that the gaping gaps around the legs weren’t particularly good at catching any of the products diapers traditionally are meant to catch and hold. My boy peed straight out of the leg hole more often than he ever caught the “super-absorbant” part. And he had diarrhea for 3 straight months…

So despite my initial reaction to the idea of disposable diapers, I quickly learned they were useless and went back to old fashioned cloth diapers. Which, despite having poked enough holes in my fingers to donate blood at the Red Cross, actually did work for the purpose diapers were invented to address.

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Filed under Green Choices, Baby Stuff, Clothing, Family Planning, Healthy Babies | Comment (0)