Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Quit lying to the kids!

Did you know the “store” makes eggs? I sure didn’t. Why must we lie to our children about where our food comes from? A hen had to suffer in horrible conditions to produce those eggs that you so ignorantly agreed came from the store, and no, I don’t care if they were free range or “humanely raised” whatever that means. Anyone who cares to analyze the situation objectively will easily see that by resorting to lying to our children or telling them half-truths about where their food comes from we tell the world that the truth is too horrendous for a child to take. I understand the need for keeping concepts at age appropriate levels. Depicting cow slaughter to a child under ten years old most likely would be a bad idea for example. I do think however, that an age appropriate explanation of where the slab of flesh on said child’s plate comes from is important. For that matter I think an explanation of where Nikes come from is important as well, but that’s a different topic.



The problem is (for the exploiters anyways) is that kids get this stuff. They haven’t had the years of cognitive dissonance to be able to shrug off the truth like some adults can. No, when our children are told the truth they see things such as this for what they really are, atrocities of the highest scale. That’s why we are scared to tell them because they, unlike many of us, will put two and two together and realize that the animal you just told them about, a being that they understand to be an individual with the ability to suffer, is nothing but a distant relative of the animal that was killed to feed them.


The world can’t have honesty when it comes to food production. If we told our children, what really happens many more people would grow up Vegan today. We all know the saying that goes “if slaughterhouses had glass walls more people would be Vegan.” Well I bet if more people were honest about where our food comes from at a young age, more people would be Vegan too.
-Matt Hastings

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Matt. I noticed your comments on yahoo answers, that's how I found your blog. (I'm gal_D)

You are right, parents should quit lying to their kids about food (and other things like where do babies come from, and santa). But an omnivore cant be 100% honest, because first of all, they are disolutional about their own choices and dont like to think where the meat/dairy/eggs come from. So I think even better advice for them would be to quit lying to themselves.

It's funny how an omnivore gets defensive when his/her lifestyle is questioned, but at the same time they dont really want to know what goes on. So what are they saying? "I'm not wrong, but if I am I dont want to know!"??

Did you ever see all the processed meat in kids schools? They are in shapes of happy, innocent things, no wonder kids dont see it as a piece of an animal. And even when they do manage to see a glimpse of reality they will immediately be lied to.

That pic with eggs is a perfect example that parents want to keep their kids in the dark about what they're feeding them with. Creepy. They are so overly defensive and secretive for "humans that are naturally carnivores" and blah blah... they'll come up with any excuse only to keep unmoved and passive.

Eric said...

For some reason this reminds me of the recent Mike White film, Year of the Dog. Molly Shannon's character exposes her very young, sheltered niece to the realities of animals farmed by Big Ag. It's kind of a cringeworthy moment in the film, because she's doing it against her sister-in-law's wishes, but her niece turns out to be the one person who understands her love of animals.

Veganramblings said...

Yeah Eric, I know what you mean. That's a subject that I'm personally unclear as to the best approach. I feel that after a certain age children have a right to know what they are eating, yet if the parents don't want to tell them is it really our place to do so?