TIFU by making my child vegetarian.

[u/CompetitionExtreme36]

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.

[u/EmberOnTheSea]

no cows are hurt or killed when making milk

You know that isn't true though, right?

The entire industry requires cows to be lactating, which requires pregnancy. Where do you think those baby cows go?

And the egg industry literally macerates male chicks.

I get this is outside the scope of a child's awareness but all adults should be aware of this.

I'm not a vegetarian but I don't lie to myself about where my food comes from.

[u/ThisTooWillEnd → u/EmberOnTheSea]

As a person who doesn't eat animals or their products for ethical reasons, I appreciate you. All I really want is for people to make informed choices and decide what amount of animal suffering they are actually okay with when they choose their meal. I'm not out here policing what other people eat, or generally trying to convince them of anything (with very few exceptions, like please don't eat farmed salmon), but I'm always sort of baffled when animal-eaters tell me as though it's news that animals are routinely abused and mistreated, and so are the humans who raise and slaughter them. I know. I know that. It's not new information to me.

[u/astarredbard → u/ThisTooWillEnd]

Would you please enlighten me about the farmed salmon? What's the issue? I am not familiar!

[u/ItMeansFreedom → u/astarredbard]

There’s a fantastic short film called Wild Summon that explains the plight of the salmon.

[u/dodekahedron → u/ItMeansFreedom]

Is it really summon or are you talk to text? I can see how salmon could be heard summon lol

[u/ItMeansFreedom → u/dodekahedron]

Ya it’s a play on words

[u/ThisTooWillEnd → u/astarredbard]

It's pretty much awful in every single way. In brief summary:

1. the salmon babies are generally caught wild, so they are reducing the number of wild salmon
   
2. the fish are kept in large 'ocean pens' which are open to the ocean, but kept in such densities that the fish are overcrowded and swimming in their own waste
   
3. these ocean pens are bad for the ocean adjacent to them, and diseases in the pens can easily spread to wild fish, including wild salmon
   
4. the farmed salmon end up with weird deformities and wounds. if you look in stores they sell pieces of the fish, but not whole. there's a reason for that
   
5. farmed salmon doesn't have the same vibrant color of healthy wild salmon because the fish don't have a varied diet and don't get the same exercise. they're just fattened up on processed food. Processing plants dye the flesh orange.
   
6. finally, because of their diets and growth habits, the farmed salmon has more unhealthy fats and fewer healthy fats found in wild salmon.

You can do a brief image search of what salmon farms and farmed salmon themselves look like. You don't have to take my word for it.

[u/mortalomena → u/ThisTooWillEnd]

They dont dye the flesh, they feed them the same chemical which gives the flesh that salmon color in the wild.

Also I think they do grow their own salmon babies, never heard that they would catch wild.

[u/Chunky1311 → u/mortalomena]

Yeah their comment was semi-truth, semi-fearmongering.

[u/astarredbard → u/ThisTooWillEnd]

I knew about the processing of the color and that wild caught is best but I didn't know about the pens or the catching of wild babies! Thank you!

[u/Cool_Main_4456 → u/ThisTooWillEnd]

That sounds bad, but not worse than literally every other aspect of animal agriculture of any kind, so I'm not really sure why you're singling that out.

[u/ThisTooWillEnd → u/Cool_Main_4456]

True. I think the only 'worse' part is that in huge domesticated animal production, they aren't killing native populations of the animals in question, because they aren't native. They are definitely hurting other wild animals nearby. But yes, all large-scale animal agriculture is pretty horrific in every way.

[u/Cool_Main_4456 → u/ThisTooWillEnd]

decide what amount of animal suffering they are actually okay with

I'd go a bit further than that and ask what they would be okay with if it were to be done to them. When people talk about "killing animals humanely" it's clear they're not considering the animal's point of view of the situation, and they really should.