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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Vegetarians Cruel and heartless?

54 replies

MikeOxstiff · 07/04/2011 21:46

At DDs school when a child has a birthday they bring in sweets to share out after school (DD is 5 so the parents go into the school to pick up the children) I know some parents are vegatarian and when their child gets sweets they take them off them and say " They are not allowed those sweets"
The look of disapointment on the childs face breaks my heart

How cruel

OP posts:
Vallhala · 07/04/2011 22:03

"shouldnt the children be left to decide if they want to be veggie when they are older?
Who are we to impose our veiws onto children"

Ermmm... well, where my children are concerned I'm their mother actually.

Twat.

animula · 07/04/2011 22:03

"Who are we to impose our views on children?"

Mmmm ... parents?

A very useful view I have is that running in front of moving vehicles is dangerous. Thank you - I have seen the light. I thought I was adding the wisdom acquired over the years to my child's ever-expanding stock of experience.

Thanks to you, I now realise that it was simply a form of "power-over". My child is a flower of the universe, and I should let her run free and untrammelled by my own views.

You are totally on a wind-up. But I suppose I'm quite bored too.

bubbleymummy · 07/04/2011 22:03

Good point hairy :)

TondelayoSchwarzkopf · 07/04/2011 22:05

What about meat-eaters - don't they impose their views? Or is it just veggies?

DISCLAIMER: I would really really really like to be a veggie but I love meat too much.

Also the OP's question is dumb - parents say what their kids can and can't eat all the time. It's not cruel. What if one of 'em had an allergy?

foreverondiet · 07/04/2011 22:05

If you were considerate you'd ask the teachers if there were any food issues with the other children in the class eg vegetarians, religious requirements allergies etc.

jimpisone · 07/04/2011 22:05

YANBU, I am cruel and heartless. My DS's every waking minute is a misery because of my decision to bring him up without eating fuck knows what from fuck knows where. Hmm
I would probably take them off him anyway for after dinner. When it was DS's birthday I sent in those little packs of dried fruit, but I'm a bit of a twat stickler for things like that.

Carrotsandcelery · 07/04/2011 22:06

It is precisely because I want my dcs to have a choice that I have raised them as vegetarians. They have had a choice for as long as they have been able to tell me where meat comes from. My ds (6) does not want to eat non vegetarian sweets and asks himself when he is given them whether they are vegetarian or not. He is not so desperate for a sweet that he would eat something like that.

MikeOxstiff · 07/04/2011 22:07

hairylights
Why not say to a child "Do you want this meat product or not "
Then see what they want rather than say "you must eat this"
I bet most children given the choice would eat the sweets/meat

OP posts:
Flowerpotmummy · 07/04/2011 22:13

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

herladyship · 07/04/2011 22:13

It Is not a well documented scientific fact that vegetarians are cruelly imposing their views onto their children whilst all the bumhole gobblers meat eaters are perfect parents Grin

Disclaimer, I am not a veggie but dh & dd are and I find OP to be ignorant misinformed Wink

halfcaffodils · 07/04/2011 22:17

Funny, my 11 yo dd said the other day 'The reason I'm not veggie is cos you can't eat most sweets' ! (This is not actually true, she just doesn't have very firm resolve about anything she likes, although she avoids actual slices of meat)!
My veggie friends have always left it up to the children to decide, having provided them with the full facts, and they have always checked the label or asked, from a very young age.
I was veggie for 20 years but I have never seen the point of throwing something away once it has been accepted - unless it actually makes you heave. I would want to give the sweets to someone else who would enjoy them, or give them back to the person who offered them.

animula · 07/04/2011 22:18

Here's the thing MikeOxstiff - a lot of our tastes are programmed by nature (apparently). We love things that were scarce in nature - and were/are good for us only in small quantities.

The rather worrying situation we have now is that we have engineered a lot of these things that hit the wow receptors, and have them in mass amounts, and they are very bad for us indeed.

Sweets, definitely, meat in the quantities eaten in this culture - very probably.

That is why you should certainly not allow a child to just eat the things that appeal - that would be severely crap parenting.

Hopefully you, as an adult, have more sense than to follow that as an eating pattern for yourself.

Then, there is a Big Industry behind these foodstuffs.

After that, there is the whole issue of the ethics of rearing animals for consumption by humans. Our culture isn;t big on discussing ethics in public fora, and is largely supine when it comes to dissemination of information about food, hence to raise children capable of giving informed consent, you have to, largely, make a concerted effort to inform you children, as parents, because the default setting is lack of information. And the supposed "non-ideological", "neutral" position is, in fact, no such thing, but is rather filled with the ideology of a capitalist food market, that people tend to go along with because that is the default setting in our culture.

Flowerpotmummy · 07/04/2011 22:19

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

edam · 07/04/2011 22:19

Golly, if it breaks your heart to see a child stopped from eating a sweet, what happens when you inadvertently witness something really sad? How on earth do you cope at funerals?

It's quite weird that people think slaughterhouse byproducts are 'a treat'.

hairfullofsnakes · 07/04/2011 22:21

I am not a veggie but bubblymummy has made me think! I also think there are better things to give kids than nasty sweets. Why oh why do people give their kids a taste for nasty sugary sweets?!

moosemama · 07/04/2011 22:24

We are veggies and have always had a stash of vegetarian sweets at home for these occasions. My dcs knew they from an early age would get something far nicer than Haribo off me and were always happy to hand them over to me in exchange for something better.

I did however teach them to put them into their bookbags when they were given them, rather than make a big fuss about not being able to have them, whereas another boy in ds1's class always launched into a huge anti-meat eating diatribe every time sweets were distributed.

Fortunately, the new Head at the school has some common sense and has banned the giving out of sweets on birthdays. Now children take in a new book for the class bookshelves, which we label from the child, as a gift to their class. In the infants the teacher then reads the book to the class at the end of the day - in the juniors it goes onto the class bookshelves for the children to read whenever they like. A much nicer idea all round imho.

We do still get it occasionally with party bag stuff, but again my dcs know we have nicer treats in the tin at home and are always happy to swap.

Ds1 isn't allowed gluten either and on bake-sale days he buys a cake to bring home for his little sister, then eats the alternative home-made gluten-free one I have provided for him. He doesn't have a problem with this at all.

exoticfruits · 07/04/2011 22:30

I think that you will find that as the DCs get wise to it they eat them before they leave the classroom! (or some will)

ratspeaker · 07/04/2011 22:34

OP
do you feel the same when a parent refuses the child's sweet due to religious reasons?
ie they keep kosher or they are Muslim, there's a lot of sweets use pork geletine
That too is a parent imposing their belief on a child

MikeOxstiff · 08/04/2011 10:13

ratspeaker
religious reasons and health reasons not to eat meat are ok but to refuse your child a still warm pork pie to eat with the jelly runing down your chin just because you choose to be veggie is just not on
Most sweets use beef geletine and are kosher/halal

OP posts:
Yukana · 08/04/2011 11:33

I wouldn't call Vegetarians or Vegans cruel. I may be vegetarian temporarily whilst pregnant and go back to vegan when my daughter is born, but even if I did bring her up as a vegetarian I would give her vegetarian sweets. There are plenty of alternatives if you know where to look!

I wasn't vegetarian/vegan my entire life but I do prefer the alternatives myself. :)

edam · 08/04/2011 12:04

Right, so principles and morals are worth of respect only if they are inspired by religion? That doesn't really make sense, Mike. My moral stance is just as important to me as the moral values of an observant Jew or Muslim are to them. Perhaps even more so as I've worked this stuff out for myself, rather than following a ready-made set of rules handed down from someone in authority.

edam · 08/04/2011 12:06

And it's a bit arse over tit to call vegetarians cruel when the whole point is they object to the cruelty of animal slaughter.

EricNorthmansMistress · 08/04/2011 12:13

shouldnt the children be left to decide if they want to be veggie when they are older?
Who are we to impose our veiws onto children

shouldnt the children be left to decide if they want to be MEAT EATERS when they are older?
Who are we to impose our veiws onto children

See?

trulyscrumptious43 · 08/04/2011 12:29

Yes totally, the children should decide whether they are veggie or not. So they must have an informed choice, which means being aware that the food they eat is from an animal that was killed. Modern packaging and processing fosters the idea that these food products come from somewhere far removed from animal sources.
I suspect that 'leaving them to make their own minds up when they are older' would mean giving them meat to eat until they are old enough to question it. A bit like encouraging children to believe in god until they are old enough to question it.

Do you know what?
There is no god.
Jelly sweets are made from dead animals.

And that's the truth.

jellybeansontoast · 08/04/2011 12:39

Actually the vast majority of jelly sweets do use pork gelatin, not beef. It is also used in actual jelly. The fact that the others use beef is beside the point - if one keeps kosher or eats only halal, then the beef in the sweets won't be kosher or halal so you wouldn't be able to eat it anyway.

The only sweets which are kosher are ones which are officially marked as kosher and usually available in specialist shops.

I'm veggie, I was brought up veggie and I have had plenty of opportunities not to be one. Aside from a little idle curiosity, I really have no desire to eat meat, and that is entirely my choice. I would take those sweets away from my child and replace them with something nicer. If when they were older they wanted to eat them, fine. Their choice.

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