To be mad at FIL for feeding my daughter meat?

[Fruitypebbles]

Hi, just joined the site to ask this.

We're vegans, and my daughter has been raised and weaned vegan. She's 5 and happily eats anything put in front of her. She's very healthy, not lacking in any vitamins or nutrients at all and is beautiful, happy and refuses to eat meat usually because she knows in child friendly terms why we are vegans.

Despite her health being perfectly fine (she rarely ever gets ill, let alone any deficiencies in iron and protein - there's plenty of protein in plants!) my FIL thinks we're evil. We've given him all the information, shown him exactly how much she gets in a normal day and he can see how healthy she is. He fed her a meat casserole, she obviously couldn't recognise the meat in the stew because we use meat subs occasionally. She was very, very sick after this as her body can't digest meat after never eating it. Why can't he just respect our choices to not eat animal products? AIBU?

We have to learn to eat meat because while we can eat it, it's not really a part of our natural diet. We have neither the mouth enzymes, digestion systems, teeth or or physiology of natural meat eaters. Although I know this is a highly contentious issue. Humans are the most adaptable animals and have adapted to all kinds of things, but the natural diet of a human certainly wouldn't be cow or pig (if you disagree I challenge you to hunt, kill and eat a cow with your bare hands) This is why a person not trained from a young age to eat meat would have problems, and why so many meat eaters end up with medical problems because of it. Biggest cause of colon cancer? Meat.

To eat all kinds of things*

There is a lot of scientific evidence that eating fish was crucial to our evolutionary development of larger brains. And eating meat in reality in the past would have included insects and very small animals.

I really don't mind what people choose to eat or not eat - entirely up to them but the degree of completely unproven nonsense spouted on this thread is something else

Bet your are glad you joined Mumsnet for this OP!

Insects and small mammals sure, grubs that sort of thing. Not cows or pigs. Fish can be argued for, but the biggest argument is that it's cooking food that helped us get smart, allowing us to spend less time chewing and digesting and getting the calories to our brains quicker. Cooking our food is most likely what made us human, and is really the main thing that sets us apart from other animals. About 40% of our daily calories go just to fuel our brains, and our brains preferred source of energy is glucose, not protein.

But I don't want to hijack this thread with a veganism debate (sorry OP)

Totally missing point of thread but if you are ever in my neck of the woods op, we have an amazing new restaurant and deli which has just been opened. believe me it is very popular by both vegans and non vegans alike. A lot of people around here have started to integrate vegan recipes into their diet for health reasons. You are welcome to come for a meal with me if you are ever up here.

www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjn2tCtkILMAhXJShQKHToPAo8QFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lolosvegan.com%2F&usg=AFQjCNHSWJb8gMx9jv-j1wE5usE-zjvEgQ&sig2=AJdBGa4ne8rY_5ifgaxQUQ

As someone who is dairy free, I actually eat a lot of vegan junk food and I massively disagree with the PP who said that a vegan diet must be sad....

I go to vegan fairs and festivals and they are heaving with disgustingly unhealthy food - cakes, sweets, biscuits etc; plus curries, fried street food etc.

I'm addicted to vegan marshmallows and 'wagon wheels' and usually bring home my own bodyweight in cakes and sweets...

I've fed vegan cake to unsuspecting friends and no-one has noticed; and we often eat out at Las Iguanas who have an entirely vegan menu alongside the omni menu, so we can go out with all our friends and everyone can pick what they want.

I get more stick for being teetotal than for not eating dairy/eating vegan...

Bagpuss, VeganVagina's post was a joke. I'm pretty sure Flowrrs wasn't.
I eat btw, I have been veggie and to be frank I think that was much healthier. But looking at how the branches of stupidly large my family are on the Indian side, the vegetarians are in much better health, that's been the case through their lives. That's not scientific, just my observation.

VeganVagina funniest post I've seen in a while.

Also enjoying the people having a massive sense of humour failure over it.

How is anyone thinking veganvagina was being serious - come on people!!

Neither vegan nor veggie but I still think your FIL was an arse.

I was brought up a meat eater and was sick every day of my life. I was covered in eczema and spent a lot of my life with my head down the loo. By the time I was 16 I was 5ft 5" and weighed 5 1/2 stone. I left home, turned vegetarian and never looked back. Turned Vegan a few years ago when I noticed that going wheat and dairy free cleared my eczema.
Dd now 16 and brought up veggie has just decided to become vegan. Ds will I think join her when he is a little older.

Dh a meat eater, is diabetic and in January was diagnosed with stage 4 Bowel cancer. One of the causes of Bowel cancer is eating meat.

sorry posted too soon. What would your FIL have done if your dd had a nut allergy. Feed her nuts just to prove a point. This looks like he deliberately fed her meat just to prove a point. Bet he thinks you either made up how ill she was or denies it was the meat that made her ill.

I watched Forks over Knives the other day, a documentary that looks into the health risks of eating meat. I recommend it to anyone who is interested.

I'd be furious!! It's my worry that my my will sneak meat to my children as she is a massive meat eater and we have arguments about bringing up kids veg. If I ever found out she had done I'd stop her seeing them for a while until she got the message!

And there are health risks in being a vegan.

The solution is to eat healthily. Meat will not harm you in smaller amounts. The traditional Chinese food is very healthy. Lots of vegetables and a small amount of meat.

Wow, this really blew up. A lot of people are mad at me for feeding my daughter a vegan diet, but she's healthy. She's happy. She loves animals, she loves our animals. She knows in children's terms where meat comes from and why we don't eat it and she so far agrees with it. She's likely lactose intolerant so I wouldn't let her have dairy, and if she chooses to eat meat when she's older, that's fine - but the house will remain a vegan household.

I won't have dead animals in my refrigerator. Out of the house, it will be her choice, but I'm not sure yet if I'll willingly buy her even egg or dairy containing products. If she gets pocket money, she can spend that how she wishes, but purchasing them myself is supporting industries I do not suppor.

If I fed her meat from birth I'd be uprooting my own morals and when she grows up and learns exactly what happens to what she eats (in a meat circumstance) she would be incredibly confused we knew this and still fed her it. I have friends and I myself feel so guilty for all of the animals I've eaten. This way she has a clean slate - if she wants to eat meat she can slowly introduce it and I won't disown her or anything. If she wants to be vegetarian or 'cheat' with snacks (despite my vegan brownies being delicious ;) ) she's welcome to as well, but we would never go to buying a pint of milk a week and keeping flesh in the fridge.

The only health risk is really B12 which everybody should be careful with. She has a very varied diet, plenty of protein, plenty of all of the essential vitamins and nutrients. Calcium isn't an issue either. We don't need milk for calcium :) being vegan is very easy if you don't have dietary restrictions, and I'm a healthy vegan on a low fodmap diet, so it's possible.

I am vegan, so I know protein and calcium is not an issue. B12 is, as is getting enough calories for small stomachs.

No idea why people think vegan is unhealthy
OP this thread has made me think
I might go back veggie. I definitely felt better on it.

She gets Cher bloods checked by a doctor every 6 months just so we have peace of mind, they always come back perfect. She's not underweight at all, she's actually a little bit on the overweight side. Doctor says its puppy fat but I think a few too many treats 😁

I was brought up vegan from birth. I've accidentally had bacon and chicken once each and... nothing actually happened to me physically. [boring]

It has turned out I'm lactose intolerant, but I might have been anyway, and I don't actually want to consume dairy products anyway, so who cares? I'm certainly not sobbing about it!

OMG how sac religious! Did your daughter choose to eat the dead animal?Mm did she I joys it? Somebody I know brought up there son veggie was very militant about it. He took a gap year in Mongolia(planteating didn't go down well with the yut dwelling tribes he was with as there's not much food about) and came back a full blow meat eater, he loves the stuff even opened his own all pub and bistro.

She didn't choose to eat it and is very upset that she had it snuck into her dinner. That's great for him, sounds like he's done well for himself :)

I've been reading carnivore DH snippets from this thread. He had to double check what 'vegan' was.

'Does that mean that she can't have beer?' he asked (finings in beer can be animal derivatives).

I've pointed out to him that she's 5 years old, so probably isn't the biggest issue in the world at the moment. But he was relieved to hear that you can have vegan beer, as I'm sure you all are

YADNBU. He's an arse of the highest order. Does he have any food allergies that you could play with, the next time you cook? really joking, food allergies are not to be played with, as I know from my own