This article from Fatherly sums of the state of things and the need to start instilling some new values in our current crop of young Global citizens. While it wasn’t their fault that we are where we are today, we do still have the ability to put the brakes on a catastrophic re-imagining of what it means to live life on earth.
I’ve gone two years now without eating meat and I don’t miss it. In fact, I wish it weren’t so ubiquitous and in my face all the time. I wish it weren’t squeezed and coaxed and into things where it doesn’t belong. The article closes with a few other suggestions for making this all a little more doable that I can get behind for those in transition.
- Do it yourself. In parenting, leading by example is the most important thing to do. This is also the only way you can really control what you’re eating.
- If you don’t start until they’re five, that’s ok. There is so much going on in the first four years of parenthood that adding another thing might break you. Also, vegan formula? Telling a toddler to not eat cheese? Count me out. Whenever you can start making these changes, be it five or 85, we all need to move toward a plant-based future.
- Let them cheat. Anytime you’re out to a restaurant, anytime they are at a friends or the grandparents, let them have a burger if that’s what they want. If this is what gets you on board, fine. I bet you after going plant-based for a long enough, you’ll eventually realize the only person you’re cheating is yourself.
- Don’t cook two meals. This is good parenting advice in general, for the many folks who cook a meal for them and then one of lesser nutritional (or moral) value for their kids, it’s a bad lesson. Just don’t do it. Also, this only works if you’re following the first tip. Um. No. Just no. You eat what I make.
- Buy a vegan cookbook and follow it for a week. It is the easiest way to see how doable it all is. It’s really not all that hard, though a knife skills class would not be a bad investment of time and money.
- Make use of the fake meat revolution. The Impossible Burger is a helluva lot like the real thing. Choose it — it is simply more sustainable and you’re not at all missing the point. I put this in the same cheating category and think of this sort of thing as weekend food, but these kinds of products are absolutely indispensable for transitioning and I think one day for what are going to become nostalgia foods.