To think children should know where meat comes from?

[TheClacksAreDown]

Last weekend I went to a family BBQ at which I saw my cousin, I'll call Abi. She has 3 DCs (7, 4 and 1) and I have a nearly 4 year old. I was sitting chatting to Abi and her eldest two and we got talking about the food. In this I mentioned in passing that I really liked the sausages from a farm shop we sometimes go to and that they are from the pigs they breed on the farm. Suddenly Abi is glaring at me. I'm unclear what I've done but move the conversation on swiftly. When the children run off a few minutes later, Abi looks annoyed and says to me "the children don't know where meat comes from and I don't appreciate you bring it up". I was really surprised and said "oh, sorry" and she stalked off. Had I known her views, I would have respected them.

Now I'm the first to admit that Abi and I are quite different in many respects, which is of course fine. Of particular relevance here, she is vegetarian (I am not but no problem with her being one) and she is quite girly (I'm not) and she is not brilliant at coping with tough messaging so on one level I can see why she finds skipping the topic appealing. But I was still quite surprised at the approach and couldn't help but feel it would lead to problems. Her eldest is hardly a baby any more and isn't it going to come to a nasty shock when she finds out where her food comes from? The children do eat meat but it mainly seems to be things like ham, nuggets and sausages etc which obviously don't immediatley resemble the animals they come from so I could see why the children wouldn't have made the link themselves yet.

Don't get me wrong, I've not been subjecting my DC to gruesome details of slaughterhouse practice or reiterated at dinner time "Milly the Moo Cow died to give you this beef casserole, now eat up", but DC does seem to get that sausage come from pigs, steak comes from cows, chicken breasts comes from chickens etc and sees meat being chopped up at the butchers. We visit farms to see the animals and with fish we look at fish in the aquarium/lakes etc but DC also enjoys going to the fish counter and taking home a fish to cook.

So, AIBU to think that if children and going to eat meat then they should gently have the idea of where meat comes from raised with them in age appropriate ways? Or is Abi's approach normal and I'm out of step with what is appropriate?

[ThatBloodyWoman]

Mine know.
Being countryfied kids,they've grown up with seeing animal death,up close and personal.
They're more pragmatic than me tbh -when I thought of Cecils' (the lion recently hunted and killed) cubs being killed it really got to me,but dd1 reminded me its the circle of life.

[TheClacksAreDown]

User100 - the husband is not veggie. I don't know quite how they agreed this approach and I think Abi's willingness to handle meat is limited to putting ham on a plate or maybe nuggets etc in the oven - I don't think she would handle meat that looks like meat IYKWIM. I know from friends who've gone down the veggie DC path that you have to balance the diet carefully to ensure an appropriate food intake. Abi's children are relatively fussy although so is mine, so I think given where they are now, it would probably be really tough to get them onto a balanced veggie diet.

TreadSoftly - Oh no! Makes me think though that slightly generic "comes from pigs" that I often use could give rise to confusion. Got to love your DD's thought process though. And I guess given milk comes from udders and eggs comes from chicken's bottoms (if you overlook the finer biological details) you can see the rationale.

[PtolemysNeedle]

YANBU, you did nothing wrong, and I'm quite surprised that a 7 year old didn't know already from school.

It seems a bit odd to me that a vegetarian would want to protect her children from knowing where meat came from, because it would be easier to understand from a family of committed carnivores wanting to avoid their child choosing to be veggie.

[horseygeorgie]

YADNBU. My DD(nearly 4) has always been taught where her food comes from and can identify what product comes from what animal. We are country bumpkins though and avoiding the harsh details isn't somehting I encourage. I have no problem with being vegetarian, I think everyone should make that decision being as well informed as possible, not just blindly eating 2 for a fiver chickens without a thought to where they come from.

[TheClacksAreDown]

Those of you who have relatively young Dcs who being brought up as vegetarians - can I ask how you would deal with things like party food? So let's say your child goes to a party with a buffet including both veggie and non veggie food and you might not be there to advise/supervise - what are your expectations of the hosts in terms of flagging what they can eat and stopping them eating meat? Genuine question.

[worldgonecrazy]

YANBU. Children should know where meat comes from and that it isn't given voluntarily. If they are taught this from a young age they just accept and deal with it, no squeamishness. My daughter loves pig sausages and Bambi (venison) sausages.

YABU to equate "girly" with "unable to deal with tough messages".

[Marcipex]

I have known children not realise that chicken nuggets were made from a chicken. After all, 'rabbit food' isn't made from rabbits, cat treats are not made from cats (well, hopefully, you never know) etc.

[WorraLiberty]

I'd be very surprised if her 7yr old doesn't know that meat comes from animals

Particularly lamb and chicken.

I seriously doubt the other kids at school are going to keep silent about it.

[cunchofbunts]

My husband comes from a veggie / vegan family as is now a full on meat eater. He has never been shy about talking about the fact that he now eats dead animals.

I went to a city farm with 3.8 DD last weekend and pointed out the turkeys to her and she said: Oh they taste nice, we have turkey at nursery. She definitely knows that meat is from dead animals and has no problem with this.

[Mythreeknights]

This is hilarious! Your cousin would have a heart attack at my approach. We farm sheep and just after lambing time when they are all skipping about in the field, it's obviously Easter when most people eat lamb. So, we sit down to some lamb and DC2 gets a bit sad and says he doesn't want to eat it as he's enjoyed watching the lambing and their subsequent larking about in the fields. I replied, don't worry lambs love to be eaten, and he just accepted that and ate it. Pretending meat doesn't come from animlas is incredibly silly IMO and if you can't stomach that, then don't eat it.

[Mindexplode]

I am veggie, DH is a meat eater as are the DC, but they eat veggie if I am cooking. DH does most of the cooking though and they eat school meals so they have a wide range of foods.

I have always been honest about where food comes from, and about the circle of life in general. I remember taking DS when he was about 4 to a pet shop, he ran to the fish tanks, had a good look and then asked which one could he have for dinner.

The only food that seems to confuse them is shark as we can eat shark but it can eat us as well. I think this is the only food that works both ways round.

[tomatodizzymum]

I think, given that she's a vegetarian it would be crucial to know where meat comes from surely. After all, they will find out eventually. How would that then go down? What do they think it is? It's a bit mind boggling to be honest. We used to live in London, a lot of my 12 year old sons friends ate a LOT of chicken. He was watching one of our chicks hatch and he said "I bet a lot of the people in my old school have never seen a chicken alive", he has a point and it really makes you think how removed some people have become.

[IssyStark]

OP, she's definitely not the norm. Like others I am surprised that the eldest hasn't picked it up from school as healthy eating and where your food comes from is a big topics now.

We've always been very open about eating animals with the dc. It's led to interesting conversations about ethics and what we think is acceptable husbandry values, also about language (why is rabbit rabbit but cow is beef etc).

[tomatodizzymum]

Mindexplode that's hilarious, actually my pigs and chickens would give human meat a good go if they had the chance, especially our Longhorn chickens, they tried to take down our Chihuahua a few days ago!

[HarrietSchulenberg]

Mine all knew where meat came from very early on. Unlike my cousin who, at 15, was horrified to discover that beef was the meat of a cow. She apparently thought it was something that cows produce, like hens produce eggs. Not sure where she thought chicken came from.

[ememem84]

I've always known where food comes from. I like knowing. I only buy meat from farm shops near me. It's cheaper and tastier and there's something I like about knowing the pigs who make my bacon spent their days running about in a lovely field with a lovely view.

[User100]

OP. RE partis etc by the time kids are left at parties (about 5 say) they are old enought to know they are veggie and roughly what they can't eat. I let the host mum/dad know, DD will ask if she has any questions. The only risk is that she eats say a sausage because she assumes it is quorn but that's not happened yet.

[Aeroflotgirl]

Of course they shoukd know. Even if she is vegetarian, her chikdren shoukd know about the different food sources and where it comes from. Where dies she think it comes from, a meat fairy

[vickibee]

I knew a mother who told her kids that pigs lay sausauges just like chickens lay eggs, how to make your kids look daft at school - they ere only three but will grow up with this blatant lie..

[limitedperiodonly]

Are you sure this really happened? Like in real life, not in your head?

[Lurkedforever1]

Yanbu. Wouldn't cross my mind any child of 4 or older didn't know, and I assume most know before that. I'd have said the same infront of any under 4's unless warned beforehand not to.
Can't remember dd not knowing. We aren't vege but have strong feelings on how it lived and died, which impacts food choices. Preschool age she knew we didn't buy/ eat some animal products because the people that looked after them didn't do it as well as we would, so we'll buy/eat this that has been instead. I'm sure she got it wrong at parties etc cos I never made that big a fuss, either with her or the host, just laid the foundations for making her own ethical decisions as she got older.
'Abi' doesn't sound like she's vege for welfare reasons or she'd be feeding them decently produced proper meat, not shite like nuggets that are usually cheap intensively farmed meat. So bit hypocritical for her to take any moral high ground.

[TheClacksAreDown]

tomatodizzymum - I think if you live in an urban or suburban area it can be very easy to be disconnected from farm animals. And even when you do kind of know that the chicken breast on the foam tray wrapped in plastic in Tescos or the fried chicken in your KFC bucket is actually from an animal, it can probably be pretty easy to disconnect it from the actual live and breathing animal.

As my child is younger I hadn't really thought about the school angle. maybe the eldest has come across it and hasn't talked to her mum to avoid upsetting her perhaps. Although she is pretty dreamy so it may have not fully landed.

[achieve6]

if the husband isn't veggie, then like a pp I wonder if it's the case that they made some sort of agreement that the kids don't know until they are older, so they don't feel what they are doing is wrong.

much easier to bring them up veggie than try and hide this sort of thing surely?

[User100]

Thats my though achieve. DF has some odd idea that chicken nuggets are healthier thana veggie diet or for whatever reason doesn't want them to be veggie and the compromise is that they don't know so that they don't think what they are doing is wrong. Is this possible OP?

[bumbleymummy]

YANBU, they should know. I think they should know what's in their brightly coloured, yummy, jelly sweets as well :)