New Year's Resolution #4 - Jessie Rants

So, resolution #4 has been proving the most difficult, despite the large stocks of tomato sauce in our freezer.  Why? Because its winter.  Because we don't have all that much time to cook (and somehow I spend my time playing sudoku on facebook instead of cooking in the evenings - bad Jessie!).  Because trying to convince people that we don't need to eat meat on a daily basis is difficult.  Even more difficult is trying to stuff vegetables into the mouths of resistant adults.  Allie I can handle...

I have friends who are raising their kids more-or-less vegetarian.  They eat fish, but not other forms of meat.  At first, I thought they were being a little unfair - raising a child vegetarian means that they never develop the enzymes to digest meat, and then meat consumption makes them sick.  (Ask anyone who has been vegetarian for a long time, they can tell you in graphic detail what a little chicken stock can do to them.)  By raising a child vegetarian, you are making the decision for them that they will never eat meat, or at least, they will never eat meat without digestive consequences.  My friends make the argument that parents make lots of decisions for their children - raising them within a particular religion, for example.  I say that a Catholic kid can become Buddhist later in life without physical discomfort.  Its an ongoing discussion...

But lately I've been thinking that their decision not completely off base.  I don't want to deny Allie meat altogether, but the reality is that Americans eat WAY too much meat.  Once or twice a week is more than sufficient protein in our diet, especially when we're consuming eggs and dairy as well.  All of the environmental reasons have been discussed at length here and here and a hundred other places - just google environment and vegetarianism.  But there are really good health reasons as well!  People who eat meat have a greater chance of developing heart disease, various kinds of cancer, and Alzheimer's disease.  The way we raise meat in this country is horrifying as well.  Even if you take the animal welfare out of the picture (which is important too!), you still have the fact that factory farms are filling our food animals with antibiotics, creating lots of antibiotic resistant bugs, and feeding animals unnatural foods, which is unhealthy for us.  Did you know that grass fed beef contains less cholesterol than grain fed?  And then there are the processed meats...  do you actually know what is in a hot dog?  If you did, you wouldn't eat it.  Ew. 

The moral of the story can be summed up as whole grains and vegetables, good, lots of meat, bad.  What I want most for my daughter is for her to grow up healthy and happy, and on a planet that is prepared to support her generation.  Given all of the environmental and health reasons to go mostly-vegetarian, what am I waiting for?