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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To have asked her not to tell dcs?

258 replies

Edenviolet · 31/05/2014 22:44

Dsis has recently become a vegetarian after apparently seeing some horrific films about animals not stunned before slaughter. She is also very vocal about standards being high for animals etc ( eg she won't eat barn eggs only free range-more on that later...)

She started today to tell my dcs that she is vegetarian and I had to stop her explaining why as I don't want them saying they want to be as well (hard enough to get them to eat as it is and I don't want another food issue or have to cook different meals).
I also didnt want them upset about the stunning/slaughtering that she was just about to mention.

As far as I'm concerned all they need to know is that auntie doesn't eat meat, not the exact reasons why.
She started talking about chickens and how only free range eggs will do and dd1 checked our ones and said they were barn eggs and dsis shook her head and explained how unhappy the chickens would have been.

I have no issue with dsis being vegetarian, if she comes to our house I'm happy to provide the right food for her and I understand what led her to make her decision but I don't want her 'lecturing' my dcs about it, and it really does seem like a lecture when she starts talking about it .
She even went through the cupboard to see which sweets have gelatine in and ds1 asked why and she started to explain but I stopped her again as I didn't want dd2 put off any of them.

OP posts:

QueenofLouisiana · 31/05/2014 23:21

I am vegetarian and I am very careful to explain it as being "because I don't like the taste of meat" to the children I teach. Children are very impressionable and I would hate my point of view to change their lifestyle choices in that way.
DS eats meat, knows where it come from etc, our local butcher continues the tradition of a very visual display of his food. He prefers cauliflower cheese to roast beef, but that is totally his choice.

PixieofCatan · 31/05/2014 23:22

Hic I wish that my parents had done that. The only veg I ate until I was 16 was sweetcorn. I lived on quorn mince, pasta and rice as I was growing up. Massive massive food and sensory issues regarding food to battle through over the past few years thanks to that!

hedgehog My sister eats fish too. They're pescetarians, not vegetarians. People like them are the reason that every time I go back to my home town and try to get veggie food, I get offered fish Weirdly, if I needed too, I could kill a chicken but not a fish

Original poster

Edenviolet · 31/05/2014 23:22

She was just looking at the sweets to see if they were vegetarian or not, just to be nosey I think so she could reiterate her story about how gelatine is produced but I stopped her before dd heard.

OP posts:

SuburbanRhonda · 31/05/2014 23:22

If someone asked me those questions, worra, as a vegetarian I'd say I know it would be logical for me to be vegan, rather than vegetarian. But as an interim step, with DCs still to feed, I chose vegetarianism. I know it's not yet enough, but it's on the right road.

I couldn't give a shiny shit what anyone's else eats.

ICanSeeTheSun · 31/05/2014 23:24

Your sister is a Pescetarians

WorraLiberty · 31/05/2014 23:24

That's a very good way to explain it QueenofLouisiana

PrincessBabyCat · 31/05/2014 23:24

Worra's right. If you're going to be a vegetarian on ethical reasons you can't have dairy or eggs without being a hypocrite.

Just talk to her aside and tell her bluntly you don't want your kids being preached to about it.

You could always do what my aunt and uncle did to my cousin. She could be as vegetarian as she wanted, but they weren't changing what they were cooking for dinner. So if she didn't want to eat animals she better start saving her money to buy her own food. She stopped being a vegetarian when she decided she didn't want to spend her allowance money on separate food. (They did cave a little and get free range chicken eggs and meat for her).

SuburbanRhonda · 31/05/2014 23:26

Pescovore, actually.

[where's the pedant emoticon when you need it?]

Original poster

Edenviolet · 31/05/2014 23:26

I imagine if I gave her that image of the dairy industry she may very well attempt to be vegan

OP posts:

SuburbanRhonda · 31/05/2014 23:27

Your aunt and uncle sound horrible, princess.

No offence.

weatherall · 31/05/2014 23:27

Free range chickens aren't running around a field all day either.

I think you sound quite uninformed about where your food comes from.

DCs can understand food production without becoming vege.

My DCs know that some meat comes from 'happier' animals than others. DP is vege the rest of us eat mostly ethical meat etc.

I do think a 12yo should know some of this but in a balanced way.

Igggi · 31/05/2014 23:28

Hedgehog your eggs won't come from caged birds if European. I believe a barn has something like 9 birds per square meter. They never get access to outside though, unlike the free rangers.

WorraLiberty · 31/05/2014 23:29

OMG I think your cousin might be my brother, even though she's female!

My parents had 7 mouths to feed on a very limited budget.

My Mum told my brother he had plenty of time to turn vegetarian when he was able to shop for and cook his own meals.

She'd make smaller allowances such as not giving him any chunks of meat when dishing up a pot of stew...or leaving the meat off his Sunday dinner plate.

But really, times were hard and she didn't have the money or the time to do much else.

AgentZigzag · 31/05/2014 23:32

I reckon it's totally fine to be however vegetarian you want, what's it to anyone else whether they eat fish once in a while or sneak in a bacon sarnie or two?

The problem is when they start fucking banging on about it all the fucking time.

Making out they're better than the 'meat eaters' because they're denying themselves something they'd probably enjoy.

There's just no need to bring the subject up once they've told everyone everywhere you.

Original poster

Edenviolet · 31/05/2014 23:32

I'm not uninformed (well, apart from the eggs!) but I just remember vividly being told about mechanically recovered meat, eyeballs and connective tissue in sausages by our (vegetarian) teacher when I was in yr 7 and didn't want dsis doing the same to dcs.

OP posts:

Igggi · 31/05/2014 23:33

Princess I don't agree with that at all. Being vegetarian by definition allows for the eating of eggs and milk products.
You think it is inconsistent however - well do you tell someone who gives money to a charity they are a hypocrite as they need to do more, give more - if someone only buys fair trade coffee do you call them a hypocrite for wearing non-fairly traded cotton?
The OP's sister sounds rather sanctimonious but I imagine it's just the zeal of the convert. She should calm down in time. But if you hide all the facts about animal slaughter from your dcs, they may be more likely to follow the auntie's example.

softlysoftly · 31/05/2014 23:34

YANBU while I think it's very important kids learn where their food comes from it doesn't sound like she's going to give them a balanced or even factual view on that so she should keep her mouth shut.

She gave up meat based on a non stun slaughter video over 90% of meat is stunned here so she simply has to buy either local so traceable or an appropriate marked pack to avoid buying non stun.

Tell her you are happy to educate your kids but she needs to learn a bit more fact about her choices too.

fifi669 · 31/05/2014 23:35

It is pescatarian...... DP is a recent convert

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism

Pescavores eat primarily fish

PrincessBabyCat · 31/05/2014 23:37

Your aunt and uncle sound horrible, princess.

Why? They never told her she couldn't be a vegetarian, they just said she had to buy her own food if she was going to eat a different meal than them. She got enough allowance to buy her food. She chose to use her money on clothes and fun stuff instead of food.

If animals dying really bugged her, she would have committed her own money to it. They were just telling her to put her money where her mouth is (pun intended ).

I'll be doing the same thing if DD decides she wants to eat different food from us. If it's really that important to her, she'll buy her own food. Why should I waste money on someone else's principles?

fifi669 · 31/05/2014 23:40

Two vegan sisters, a vegetarian dad and a pescatarian DP. The former have said to DS he is eating dead cow etc, luckily I got in there donkeys ago and told him bacon is from pigs, eggs are from chickens..... If they tried to discuss slaughter processes I'd kick them out he's only 3!

SuburbanRhonda · 31/05/2014 23:41

agent, your description may fit the OP's DSis, but it's way off the mark for the majority of vegetarians.

As I said upthread, I couldn't care less what anyone else eats (though I do think if we didn't have such a love affair with cheap meat, we might not need factory farming). I'm not interested in converting anyone or acting superior. Sorry if that doesn't fit with your prejudice.

stiffstink · 31/05/2014 23:42

I understood that barn eggs are from chickens crammed into a barn.

Battery eggs are from caged chickens.

Free range are from free range.

But studies show more free range chickens are 'dead on arrival' when being used for meat than caged hens, possibly due to diseases caused by the amount of contact free range hens have with infected faeces.

Then again, there's probably another study which has found all eggs are made of blue cheese.

PrincessBabyCat · 31/05/2014 23:44

You think it is inconsistent however - well do you tell someone who gives money to a charity they are a hypocrite as they need to do more, give more - if someone only buys fair trade coffee do you call them a hypocrite for wearing non-fairly traded cotton?&

Of course not. If they explained politely that they liked fair trade coffee, I'd be open to listen and perhaps consider getting some myself. But if someone started getting on my case about wearing a diamond wedding ring and acting morally superior because they didn't, I'd very happily point out that the bar of chocolate they're eating came from child labor and that they could stfu.

SuburbanRhonda · 31/05/2014 23:45

princess, I wonder what they would have done if she'd had a food intolerance or a medical need for a different diet?

I think people's principles, especially those of children growing into young adults, are especially important to nurture. That's why I think your aunt and uncle are horrible. If they'd said, "We're really sorry, we just can't afford to buy you different food because the family budget won't stretch to it", I could understand, but you didn't say that.

Igggi · 31/05/2014 23:50

Princess you said it was hypocritical to have eggs/dairy if a vegetarian, you didn't say that was in context of someone forcing their views on you. I am disagreeing that it is hypocritical, or, at least, that it is within the confines of how humans - flawed as we are! - can be expected to behave.

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