r/tifu • u/CompetitionExtreme36 • May 29 '24

TIFU by making my child vegetarian. S

I have a 6 year old son. We went to a fair a few months ago and there was a display of livestock that the public could pet.

Me, trying to be jolly, told him that he'd be eating them for dinner someday.

My son was shocked and asked me how was that possible. I told him that meat is made by killing animals and cooking them. He then asked me what all the meats were. I told him that it's chicken, beef, steak, sausages, salami and mutton.

Later that night at home, I noticed him seperating his dinner. He removed all the meat pieces from the rice and only ate the rice. My wife asked him what was wrong and he said he doesn't want to eat animals.

Thankfully, he's fine with milk and eggs. However, he continued refusing to eat any meat. A week passed and we went to the doctor. The doctor said that it's probably just a temporary phase and we should feed him vegetarian alternatives for the time being.

We now buy canned beans, lentils, greek yoghurt, olive oil, whey protein, soy nuggets and plant-based patties/sausages. We also order a cheese pizza for him.

It's been a few months now, and I've bought iron and B12 gummies for him. Even my wife and I are starting to go more vegetarian.

TL;DR: We went to a fair and there was a display where the crowd could pet livestock. I told my son he'd eat those animals soon, and he's a full blown vegetarian now.

9.5k Upvotes

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7.5k

u/Various_Succotash_79 May 29 '24

Most kids do this at least once, I think it's part of learning empathy. He might stay vegetarian or not, just be supportive.

3.0k

u/Willowed-Wisp May 29 '24

I think I was two or three when I did this.

Thirty years later and I'm still a vegetarian and so grateful to have had supportive parents.

1.4k

u/moonman_incoming May 29 '24

My son did this at 8. He's now 22 and still vegetarian. The only one in his family.

457

u/markswaggie May 29 '24

Also did this around age 11/12, parents were supportive and am still a vegetarian to this day (25 now)

142

u/spreid_ May 29 '24

Me too and I'm about to be 30!

59

u/[deleted] May 30 '24

Me too (almost)! A delayed start at ~17 but almost 35 now!

32

u/HoMe4WaYWaRDKiTTieS May 30 '24

Me too and I just turned 37!

11

u/cheetodustflooring May 30 '24

Me too, age 10 to age 30 (now) !

1

u/underlander May 31 '24

My aunt did this when she was a kid and now she’s almost 60 and mostly vegan. Worse yet, it spread through the family so that my grandma and my mom are vegetarian. When people ask me why I’m vegetarian I say it’s congenital

21

u/theolrazzzledazzzle May 30 '24

Me too! 16 years vegetarian now!

1

u/Mandyrad May 31 '24

38 and still vegan 🐷

5

u/_YogaCat_ May 30 '24

Y'all made me so happy on a shitty day! Nice to see more people with empathy for animals. Thank you. :)

5

u/chardongay May 30 '24

i did the same at around age 13. what i don't understand is if becoming vegetarian is part of learning empathy... than what is ending your vegetarian "phase?" deciding that being empathetic is too much work? then again, i've seen how people treat other people, let alone animals, so it's not hard to see the world has an empathy problem....

1

u/AdventureDonutTime May 30 '24

I think in the face of a population who overwhelmingly consumes animals and either denies or is willfully ignorant of the reality of killing animals for food, it's no surprise that many children fall into the status quo belief system.

Especially when there's a trillion dollar worldwide industry that depends on convincing the population that consuming animals is immoral.

2

u/quicksilver_foxheart May 30 '24

Same here! I was the firsr at age 11, although I had wantes to since I first learned what meat was around 5 but didnt want to be "ungrateful " to my parents. Within the year my entire family (except my sister) became vegetarian and we all still are.

1

u/veggiesyum May 31 '24

Same! And I’m 32!

1

u/arsenaljo Jun 01 '24

I became a vegetarian in my twenties.I'm 80 now and still a vegetarian.

1

u/bulletproofshadow Jun 01 '24

I tried as a kid but sadly did not have supportive parents. Turned officially veg the day I moved out and haven’t looked back- 12 years going strong!

1

u/evieeeeeeeeeeeeeee Jun 01 '24

i was also 11, now 23! my parents weren't too thrilled at first, but now my dad excitedly brings me back new things to try from costco lmao

1

u/DivisonNine May 30 '24

Hampter :D

2

u/markswaggie May 30 '24

Clear impact area

1

u/DivisonNine May 30 '24

I’m tryna ask everybody this but

What is your favourite animal 👉👈

1

u/[deleted] May 30 '24 edited May 30 '24

[deleted]

1

u/DivisonNine May 30 '24

Yea it’s a lucio voice line lol

251

u/ninjamom66 May 29 '24

Yeah, that's about the age I was when I had the same experience. My parents flipped out. Vegan now, some decades later. Do some research about helping him with the most nutrient dense options that aren't made out of animals.

2

u/Iam-not-VEGAN-but- 26d ago

Or, go to a registered dietitian (perhaps vegan) near them. I think they've already figured stuff out.

75

u/majaohalo May 29 '24

Ahah I did this aged 7 and still vegetarian at 25. Even went vegan for 7 or so years…

30

u/Bashfulapplesnapple May 29 '24

I knew my parents wouldn't be supportive, so I waited. Practically the moment I turned eighteen I made the switch. Been over twenty years now.

2

u/citygirldc May 30 '24

Exactly what I did. The day I left for college I stopped eating meat. Over 30 years now.

1

u/Atomik23 May 30 '24

Why did you decide to stop being vegan?

1

u/majaohalo May 30 '24

Ooh personally I had developed some troubles with my eating habits that were really unhealthy and I was barely eating at all... It’s like I lost my passion for food! And I realised that my primary reason for being vegan had turned into just ‘fear’ of dairy and eggs and whatnot. So I decided to go back to veggie and I’m much happier now!

1

u/AutisticPenguin2 May 30 '24

Out of curiosity, what made you go back from vegan to vegetarian?

2

u/majaohalo May 30 '24

I had developed some really bad eating habits and food aversions from the restrictive eating that’s naturally included in veganism unfortunately! Wasn’t good for my relationship with food and so I decided to switch back. Much happier now!

2

u/AutisticPenguin2 May 30 '24

That's fair. Good on you for making the right decision for your health.

46

u/patchohoulihan May 29 '24

Me too! I'm 44 now....

2

u/666-take-the-piss May 31 '24

Same here. I did it at 7, never went back

1

u/AsparagusAcademic705 May 31 '24

I did this around the same age, but I was not supported (basically told to eat it or starve). We were on a farm and killed our own animals, so I'd helped raise a lot of them and was very distressed. I ate as little meat as possible and became vegetarian as soon as I moved out of home, 24 years ago. Forcing a child to eat meat when they don't want to is horrible. I'm so glad OP is supporting their child. 

1

u/South-Play-2866 21d ago

I noticed you said “his” family

Can’t have a vegetarian in your family!

1

u/moonman_incoming 18d ago

I mean, HE has a paternal family and a maternal family. His bio dad is a douchebag and fuck that man. But also, on the maternal side, no vegetarians, on the paternal side, there's a pescetarian, but also fuck that bitch.

So HIS family, I dunno, there's drama.

319

u/zeledonia May 29 '24

One of my kids did the same thing around 2 or 3, and has been vegetarian since. He hates the idea of animals dying so that he can eat. I fully expect him to become vegan once he has a better understanding of other food industries.

83

u/tcgunner90 May 30 '24

That's what happened with me.

"Oh I don't want to harm animals, I'll just go vegetarian"

"THEY DO WHAT TO COWS TO GET MILK"

22

u/carolinecrane May 30 '24

I made the mistake of writing a paper about factory farming in high school. I'm 51 now and a vegan.

-2

u/mean11while May 30 '24

They don't have to do anything to get milk. This seems to surprise a lot of people, but cows (and goats, etc) really want to get pregnant. It's more expensive, but you can get milk and eggs without hurting anything.

12

u/Gallon-of-Kombucha May 30 '24 edited May 30 '24

It doesn't matter that the animals are in heat/ovulating/etc.

They aren't human, they can't consent to vaginal or anal penetration by humans. It’s literally assualt and beastiality. (The only exception for it is medical intervention, because its done solely for the animals wellbeing.)

And that being said, if they want to get pregnant then they also want to raise their offspring until they’d naturally wean, which the majority never get to do. So even then, their wants are still being ignored.

1

u/mean11while May 30 '24

That's what I'm saying: they don't have to artificially inseminate anything. The animals want to go have sex.

And they can raise their offspring, wean them naturally, and still be milked.

Just because factory farming is horribly unethical doesn't mean that milk is inherently unethical.

3

u/tcgunner90 May 30 '24

And what do we do with all the extra cows that are born from our “ethical” dairy farm? What about the male ones? The dairy industry and the meat industry are the same industry, not separate ones.

I was where you were a few years ago on this subject. I thought “well there are definitely ethical ways to milk a cow, it’s just factory farms that are the problem”.

I’m not saying this to look down on you, just that I encourage you to keep being critical and learning.

1

u/mean11while May 30 '24

They live out their lives. It's not complicated; it's just more expensive. You're still talking about an industrial approach; I'm not. Milk isn't the problem; expecting it to be cheap (as a result of industrial farming practices) is.

I know there are ethical ways to drink milk because I've been doing it. We have one kidding of goats a year, which provides us with plenty of milk and a herd of pet goats that is at steady state at about 16. They're happy, friendly, and highly socialized, and they pay for themselves as an agritourism draw.

2

u/tcgunner90 May 30 '24

If we let cows live out their lives on dairy farms. Then they’d quickly cost so much that the dairy would be paying to sell milk.

I’m talking about an industrial approach because that’s the only approach to handle the quantities of milk people demand. Idk what world you live in but people demand milk products everywhere and constantly.

Let me be clear. If you have chickens in your backyard. I don’t think it’s cruel to pick up their eggs. But our society demands so many eggs that the only solution to supply that is cruelty and factory farming practices.

Probably the same with goats, I don’t know much about homesteading goats. 🐐

In a perfect world. Where people don’t demand milk. There would probably be some actually ethically sourced milk available (like you have with your goats). But it is simply not an achievable solution for everybody to have 16 goats that pay for themselves as a petting zoo.

2

u/mean11while May 30 '24

Yes, obviously. The price of milk would have to go up dramatically. Demand would go down. The industry would be forced to scale down if society decided that only ethically sourced milk was acceptable.

Demand for cheap milk and cheap eggs is very high. Cheap food is almost always provided on the backs of unsustainable, unethical, and destructive practices. The same is true in plant agriculture.

That does not mean that agriculture can't be done ethically - it's just a lot more expensive. It can clearly be done - even in a world with cheap competition from industrial ag - but most people don't share your ethical concerns, so it's not going to become predominant.

You didn't quite finish your argument. You seem to be implying that drinking milk is unethical, even if it's ethically sourced, because not everyone can have as much as they want of it. Is that where you intended to take your argument?

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u/LopsidedPalace Jun 01 '24

We can not have milk ethically at any scale worth note.

Let's say the ultra wealthy want 1,000 milking cows. That means approximately 1,000 calves a year- about half of which are male. That's 500 bills who all need 35lbs of food a day. That's 17500lbs a day or 6,387,500lbs a year. They can live up to 15-20 years. That's 95,812,500lbs of food on the low end for just one year of male calves. You're talking billions of pounds of food to produce something at any meaningful scale. It's not practical at all.

1

u/mean11while Jun 01 '24

Cows can be milked for longer than a year. They don't have to get pregnant every year. The typical year-long cycle is used because milk production is highest after a pregnancy, and there's little incentive to reduce offspring.

The great thing about cows is that they eat grass and turn it into milk. For 8 months out of the year, the cows in our fields require no food at all. For the other 4 months, they eat hay, which is inexpensive and can be sourced locally.

The best way to calculate this is to look at the steady state population of cows if we want 1000 milking cows and assume a one-year milking cycle. To have 1000 milking cows with an average lifespan of 17 years, we'd expect an ongoing population of about 8500 cows and 8500 bulls (17*1000/2).

On average, a US dairy cow produces ~2800 gallons of milk per year. So those 1000 milking cows would yield 2,800,000 gallons of milk every year. Hay costs about $0.18 per pound, so even at your feed estimates (which are a little high - a milking cow requires about 25 pounds of hay per day), feeding 8500 bulls and 8500 milking cows would cost ~$39,000,000. In other words, only $13.96 of each gallon of milk would have to go to feeding these large herds.

In reality, feed costs would be much lower than this because most cows would require no hay for most of the year. I would expect the actual annual feed costs to be more like $11 million (25 pounds for 8500 cows, 35 pounds for 8500 bulls for 120 days/year), or $3.95 per gallon.

Big numbers seem scary if you only look at the costs and ignore the big numbers on the other side.

[One interesting thing about this system is that the average cow would only have to give birth twice and be milked for two years before being retired. One result of this is that the average milk production would probably be quite a bit higher under this system than it is in our current system, with only the healthiest and most productive cows being chosen.]

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u/618smartguy May 30 '24

What they do to cows to get milk is more relevant than what they could do in a fantasy situation. 

Most dairy cows do not make it out alive. What's done to them ends in death. 

1

u/mean11while May 30 '24

What "they" do is not what I do. It's not what my neighbors do. It's not a fantasy if people are actually doing it. You're just not going to find it in a supermarket.

1

u/618smartguy May 31 '24

The context is a typical kid not wanting to eat typical meat. I guess your way kind of makes sense as a solution but it came across as contradicting (they do in fact "have to" kill the animals to raise them in a typical fashion) rather than supporting their choice to do something. 

-48

u/Here4uguys May 29 '24

I hope your son/daughter doesn't eat avocados or quinoa, because if they do I've got bad news for them [avocado trade from Mexico is controlled by cartels, whom DO NOT share your child's same sense of morality and have no qualms with killing human animals; the export of quinoa from SA countries seems to be at the expense of the people living there (that means that the more quinoa we eat outside of SA the less people are eating inside SA -- presumably people are starving because of so)]

People can do whatever with their diet, idgaf, but the idea of vegetarianism being morally superior is laughable. We dig up and burn dinosaur bones just to get to work -- at expense of literally every organism on the planet. If you don't use fosil fuel for power/transit and you're a vegetarian then I'll give it up -- you might be a better person than myself and most people. Every other vegetarian can get a reality check

20

u/Traditional-Camp-517 May 30 '24

I mean limiting harm where you can is better than saying well fuck it I can't avoid contributing to human animal and environmental suffering completely so I should make no attempt to avoid contributing to these issues.

45

u/alsokalli May 29 '24

Are you ok? This is about little kids not wanting to eat dead animals. Idk what kind of enemy you made up in your head but you're fighting windmills

20

u/Here4uguys May 29 '24

I suppose you're right

19

u/User123466789012 May 30 '24

This was the funniest response after your rant I’m so sorry

6

u/ooohthatsmelll May 30 '24

Look at how many words you typed and how worked up you got just for your conclusion to be "oh you don't meat and yet you participate in society? you're not better than me okay WE ARE BOTH BAD (and this somehow will make me feel better about my subconscious guilt)".

Also, it's quite telling how you think vegetarians and vegans only abide by their diets so they can act morally superior.

-2

u/Here4uguys May 30 '24

I mean there are negative health out cones associated with vegetarianism and even more so with veganism, so if it's not a matter of concious then it must be an act of masochism

I don't feel guilty about eating animals. We've done it for as long as our species has existed. First we had to scavenge it, then it seems like our brains changed and we were more capable of hunting in groups and we were able to hunt what we needed. 

I've got ethical qualms about what our treatment of animals means if a more intelligent species were to stumble upon us, no doubt. But aside from veal I don't see any issue with eating animals. Yeah farms should be less disgusting and cruel; that's a good reason to buy local instead of Tyson etc

3

u/ooohthatsmelll May 30 '24

Yeah farms should be less disgusting and cruel; that's a good reason to buy local instead of Tyson etc

Oh, you get all of your meat "locally"?

3

u/Plant-Zaddy- May 30 '24

I definitely do but im blessed to live in an area with an abundance of small farms

0

u/Here4uguys May 30 '24

I do try. I don't buy Tyson. It's a bit more expensive but not difficult to source local meat here. My grandparents have a farm and butcher cattle but I don't have the space for all that meat

3

u/ooohthatsmelll May 30 '24

Oh so you do buy factory farmed meat? So what you said earlier is literally meaningless, got it :]

honestly the fact that you're engaging with this topic tells me that you DO care but you're dealing with some serious cognitive dissonance. I hope you follow your heart someday.

-1

u/Here4uguys May 30 '24

I was going to say "you're no longer worth talking to" but by the time I finished reading your reply, mine was "you're a moron"

I don't know where you got "I buy factory farmed meat" from but good work. Probably do, really hard to tell. My grandparents cattle have a large pastures they're rotated between. Idk if you were making assumptions about that or what

Cognitive dissonance is abound in this world. Like thinking that killing animals for food is cruel, but purchasing food products that cause at least is much human suffering is better

1

u/ooohthatsmelll May 30 '24

Cognitive dissonance is abound in this world. Like thinking that killing animals for food is cruel, but purchasing food products that cause at least is much human suffering is better

LOL so true, the only solution is to eat food that both kills animals AND notoriously exploits, maims, and kills more workers than any other food product. Yes, THAT is the logical choice hahhaa

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u/Dense-Assumption795 May 30 '24

Except a significant amount of science and research says veganism/ vegetarian and plant based diets can be significantly healthy than a meat eating diet.

Like processed meats is a class 1 carcinogen 😂 but yeah - meat meat meat 😂

2

u/Here4uguys May 30 '24

I'm not sure it's that straightforward. Yeah steady bologna etc anything processed and with preservatives is less than ideal. There are many people who face health consequences as a result of vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. I'm not going to say everyone does but it is a thing. 

-10

u/captchairsoft May 30 '24

Nobody would be vegan or vegetarian if they understood more animals die to allow for the farming that makes it possible

Of course that's not the "understanding of other food indistries" you're talking about, but it is what it is

11

u/pcf062124 May 30 '24

That’s actually laughably wrong. You really think it kills more cows to grow the plant that directly supplies calories for us than to grow the plant, feed it to the cows, then kill the cows? In both scenarios plants are being grown and eaten. The difference is, the calories go directly to the end consumer when we eat it, but have to go through an intermediary if it’s fed to a cow. I’m not even vegetarian and I recognize this discourse as defying all logic.

5

u/Ffanffare1744 May 30 '24

This is moronic. To farm livestock you must also farm grains. I’m pretty sure that most vegetarians and vegans understand a lot more about the damages of industrialized farming than most people.

2

u/Dense-Assumption795 May 30 '24

Except that’s been proven so wrong numerous times. The man in argument people throw to support eating meat is - soy production kills billions on insects, small animals so your killing more animals blah blah blah without realising 70% of the worlds soy goes to feeding…… not humans….. you guessed it - cattle so you can have steaks and burgers so not only does that kill the cows but also all the bugs, insects and small animals too

28

u/TheMapesHotel May 29 '24

Same! Stopped at 5 and 30 years later fully vegan!

94

u/CharlieBravoSierra May 29 '24

Honestly, I'll be pleased if my daughter goes veggie. My husband is from a Very Meat family, and it gets to be a bit much for me (though I've always been an omnivore). The current compromise is that I cook vegetarian when I cook, which is about 20% of the time. Our kid is only 2, but I wouldn't be surprised if she wants to change when she understands more about how we get meat. She's very fond of our backyard chickens (who lay eggs and then live out their retired lives uneaten).

2

u/40ozkiller Jun 02 '24

Honestly more people should eat meals that don't include meat at least once a week. 

140

u/finnky May 29 '24

My parents once told me pork is from pigs. This was after lunch. I pledged to be vegetarian. By dinner, I’ve decided that the pork we were having for dinner was from a bad pig and therefore deserved to be eaten.

8

u/S2R2 May 29 '24

That pig may AT-Tack at any point, veee must deeel wit it!

3

u/Ashmizen May 31 '24

It’s interesting that English is one of the few languages where kids could even “find out” pork is pig, beef is cow.

Most other languages use the same word so it’ll be pretty obvious even for toddlers learning words that food on your plate is called the same stuff as the animals in the coloring book.

Even in English, I’m trying to understand how these kids missed the “chicken” part of … well chicken dinners.

These 6, 7, 8 year old kids have spent years and years both naming and eating chicken drumsticks, fried chicken, chicken breast, while also naming and playing with plastic toys and colorful books with chickens in them.

2

u/Apathetic_Villainess May 31 '24

My five-year old told me she doesn't like chicken any more because she learned chicken contains breasts. XD

She still loves her chicken nuggets, though. She's less going through a "vegetarian" phase and more a "I'm going to refuse anything that Mommy might make that isn't processed." She'll still eat most of the stuff they give her at daycare but I can't get her to eat those same things at home.

1

u/TJ_Rowe Jun 01 '24

This. My kid was two when he started giggling during dinner and then flapped his elbows and made clucking noises to illustrate what was so funny - his dinner had the same name as an animal. (I asked him and he confirmed that that was the joke.) We told him that they had the same name because the meat came from the animal, then had to explain how it stopping being alive.

Luckily that was before lockdown and most of our meat came from local farmers who used a "one animal at a time" slaughter system to stop it being so scary for the animals, and we could explain that, but he still went a long time not wanting sausages because he liked pigs, so I bought veggie sausages.

24

u/itsjustmefortoday May 29 '24

I was 28 when the horse meat scandal happened. The idea of the fact that we didn't even know what animal we were eating made me vegetarian and I have been ever since. My daughter eats meat though but that may change in the future.

30

u/namingdwarves May 29 '24

Same but vegan, my ten year old is also vegan and has been his entire life. His doctors say he has a healthier, more varied diet than any of their non vegan patients so it definitely can be done! :)

1

u/Silly_Detail1533 May 29 '24

Exactly! The nurses freak out every time I bring my almost 2-year-old in for a check up and they ask how much dairy milk he drinks and I say none. But, the pediatrician has been shocked the hemangioma on his leg since birth has disappeared already, well before 5-6 years old as she predicted- it’s called nutrition, ma’am!

8

u/capincus May 29 '24

Got Milk! is probably the most successful marketing campaign in the history of the world.

2

u/Silly_Detail1533 May 30 '24

Yeah, but look at the bone break studies!!

-4

u/hardolaf May 29 '24

And for every one of you who actually feeds their kids proper vegan meals are 10 other vegans who don't. That's why the nurses freak out.

Well at least in the West. India is a completely different place where healthy vegan lifestyles have been a thing for hundreds of years.

9

u/Silly_Detail1533 May 30 '24

But is the diet my sibling feeds my niblings of fast food, butter or plain noodles, chicken nuggets, processed snacks, cake, occasional canned veggies, and ice cream really any better than those 10 bad vegans? I think we can probably agree that most parents are feeding what kids will eat instead of what is nutritionally sound.

8

u/Raisey- May 29 '24

I was eight. Same though.

3

u/MrsSalmalin May 29 '24

Yeah my first memories are me refusing to eat meat. I was only allowed to go vegetarian on my 18th birthday. It's been over 10 years and I'm still vegetarian - it's not a phase, Mum!!

3

u/WotsTaters May 29 '24

I was four when I went vegetarian and still am almost thirty years later. People told my mom it was just a phase so she should force feed me meat or let me starve. I am so appreciative that she told them to f off and let me make my own choices even at that age. Whether a phase or not, children need a level of agency as long as they are still being healthy.

2

u/[deleted] May 30 '24

I had great parents as well. Haven't eaten meat in 18 years so they're pretty used to me by now (even tho I only lived with them for 2ish vegetarian years)

2

u/Throwawayyy-7 May 30 '24

I was 8 when I first tried to go vegetarian, and 11 when it stuck. 2 is impressive! Now I’m 28 and vegan lol

1

u/Willowed-Wisp May 30 '24

To be fair, I did have chicken on and off for a few years, but eventually quit that as well. Can't remember exactly when, though.

It took awhile to find good options for an autistic vegetarian with very limited options lol

1

u/EmphasisDue9588 May 30 '24

this comment really hit me. I’ve tried to go veggie a lot in my life ever since I was a child because I know it’s the right thing to do but never succeeded. I’d love to have that achievement like you. Going to give it another go

1

u/N0nsensicalRamblings May 30 '24

Same!! As far as my parents can remember, I have not eaten a single bite of red meat in my life, lol.

1

u/samiam2600 May 30 '24

You remember what you did at 3 years old?

1

u/Willowed-Wisp May 30 '24

Yah, my first memory is just before I was two. I don't have many memories from back then but a few really random ones stick out.

I'm forgetful as hell now though so I guess it's evening out lol

1

u/cavscout43 May 30 '24

OP is making it sound like a vegetarian diet is unsustainable, unhealthy, and requires all sorts of special provisions like vitamins and supplements.

Like ~25% of the world is vegetarian, 1-2 billion people. The kid will be just fine as long as they eat a healthy diet beyond iceberg lettuce and Little Debbit snack cakes.

1

u/init32 May 30 '24

Im trying to get my kids to eat more veggies. I picked up gardening and it works only for what we harvest. I make them work on it with me.

I found that vegetarian dishes are so full of flavor and it just feels good. However, i am the only one in my houswhold who really want to replace at least one meat meal a day.

Shit is sad.... vegetables are good when you know how to cook them.

1

u/jingaling0 May 30 '24

did they become vegetarian too?

1

u/Willowed-Wisp May 30 '24

Nah, they still eat meat. But it doesn't bother me because it's their choice and they've fully respected my choice (even if/when other people have them grief)

1

u/Ok_Effect5822 May 30 '24

I’m so glad I’m not the only one🤣🤣I’m 21 tho

1

u/rmdg84 May 30 '24

Same here. I started the process to becoming a vegetarian as a toddler. My parents weren’t thrilled and still don’t truly understand but they never tried to stop me.

1

u/PennilessPirate May 30 '24

I had a friend who wanted to become vegetarian, but her parents made her to eat meat until she was at least 12 so she wouldn’t be iron deficient during her young growing years. Once she turned 12 they let her change her diet however she wanted.

1

u/ApprehensiveAd6988 May 30 '24

Same here! Mom says I made the decision around 3. Almost 28 now, never went back

1

u/jackie_bristol May 31 '24

I was 5. My Dad left it on the Discovery channel...the way they processes pork in some countries is so disgusting! My mom was so mad at my Dad. Lol. but she cooked separate food for me every night after that.

1

u/LoveMyMraz May 31 '24

My three year old savagely clucks with a mouthful of chicken.

If this phase is coming for her, it’s a long way off.

1

u/Katiekat0713 May 31 '24

My kid did this at 3 or 4, still vegetarian now as well.

1

u/Cabbagesoup88 May 31 '24

I was 14 when I did this. 21 years later and still vegetarian. Think it helped that my mum ate/eats a lot of vegetarian products so there was always something in the house. It's nice to have so much variety today tho as there was very little when I first started.

1

u/I_Resent_That May 31 '24

Conversely, I was raised vegetarian by a horrible cook and broke bad the day I tried fried chicken.

Though I'm sympathetic to vegan and vegetarian arguments, I'm in my forties now and still haven't recovered from that initial flavour explosion.

1

u/Save-La-Tierra Jun 01 '24

Respectfully, what’s stopping you from going vegan?

1

u/Willowed-Wisp Jun 01 '24

An extremely limited palette (sp?) due to autism. Cheese and milk are my main forms of protein.

And , unfortunately, it's not as simple as just trying new foods when a piece of lettuce touching my tongue makes my body wretch and dry heave before I even realize what's happening.

1

u/Professional-Bat4635 Jun 01 '24

I went vegetarian about 7 years ago. I still lived with my mom and it took her a bit to accept it. She kept making non vegetarian dinners but gave in when she saw I wasn’t eating it. She’s much more supportive now. 

1

u/Leipopo_Stonnett Jun 02 '24

I was about 8. Still a vegetarian at 32.

1

u/SlophieBroomes Jun 02 '24

Exact same story here 😂

0

u/Bippity_Boppity_Boo2 May 30 '24

I never did this & forty years later, I'm still not a vegetarian lol