Harvest for Hope by Jane Goodall & Gary McAvoy & Gail Hudson

Author:Jane Goodall & Gary McAvoy & Gail Hudson [GOODALL, JANE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC028000
ISBN: 9780759514867
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2005-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

CONSIDER OUR CHILDREN

My great-nephew Alex was four years old when he discovered that meat was the flesh of animals who had been killed. He instantly decided that he did not want to eat any more of them. He proudly announced that he was a vegetarian (making the most of the difficult word in his four-year-old way— vege-taaar-ian) when he went to elementary school, and he has kept it up for over a year. It was not easy for him at the start—he really enjoyed bacon, sausages, and a number of other little-boy foods. For several months he continued to eat fish. Then he was taken to an aquarium for the first time. He was transfixed by the tanks of colorful tropical fish. Soon he made the connection between these glowing creatures and his fish fingers and fish and chips. “I shan’t eat pretty fish,” he declared. But, after standing, enraptured, in front of tank after tank, he finally decided he would not eat any fish. Nor has he. Now that he is five, he has become a passionate opponent of the cruel practice of de-finning sharks for shark fin soup. He will, I suspect, be a staunch campaigner when he is a little older.

At no time did Alex criticize the meat-eating behavior of the rest of his family. But quite suddenly, three weeks ago, his young brother, Nickolai, who had been very carnivorous, often refusing all vegetables, asked why people kept hens. When he was told that it was for eggs and chicken he became agitated and announced that he, too, would become a vegetarian!

He has kept it up for two months now. Amazingly, the boy’s father, who was always a big three-times-a-day meat eater, has become almost entirely vegetarian and only eats meat occasionally, usually out of the house. In the same way, my young friend Evelyn Kennedy, who also became a vegetarian when she was four years old, after seeing a truck full of sheep go by on their way to slaughter, gradually influenced the rest of her family to greatly reduce their meat intake.

I am always impressed when children, after suddenly realizing what meat actually is, quite refuse to eat it. Unfortunately their parents sometimes won’t allow them to become vegetarians, wrongly believing that it will be detrimental to their health. In view of the fact that millions of the world’s inhabitants never eat meat due to religious beliefs, and that many of them live to a truly venerable age, this is clearly nonsense.

Some parents worry about children becoming iron-deficient, since many people rely on animal products for their source of iron. But researchers have found that even vegan children (who don’t eat any animal products, including eggs or dairy) can absorb enough iron if they eat plenty of vitamin C–rich plant foods along with a variety of beans, nuts, and seeds. Studies in the U.S. and U.K. also show that children raised on vegetarian and vegan diets appear just as healthy and normal as children who eat meat.

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