Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse

May 5, 2008

PETA ad: Feeding kids meat is child abuse. This is one of PETA’s recent campaigns in the UK. It’s quite controversial, as you’d imagine.

I’m betting Dave Warwak would like it. I like the concept, but I don’t like PETA’s fat shaming. More on that further down. First, the good stuff.

On PETA’s website about it they say:

“Children are inherently drawn to animals. They would be appalled to learn that each year in the United Kingdom, more than 900 million mammals and birds – and countless fish – are killed for food, and millions more die from stress, suffocation, injuries or disease in the food industry.”

I completely agree. Most children love animals and they are literally traumatized when they learn where meat comes from. They are desensitized to violence against animals because eating meat teaches children that violence to animals is socially acceptable under many circumstances. This is a tough lesson that is wholly unnecessary. And it results in real trauma to children, hurt that many carry throughout their lives whether or not they recognize it as such. So, on this point, I agree with PETA that feeding your children meat is a form of child abuse.

(Here are two podcasts related to the trauma of the lies parents tell their children in order to feed them meat: animal advocacy and emotional stress and becoming re-sensitized. Here’s an article about teaching children peace.)

Don’t get me wrong, here. I think feeding kids meat is institutionalized child abuse, not individualized child abuse. I don’t think parents ought to be punished for feeding their kids foods that are not only socially acceptable, but that are also heavily marketed directly to children and that are supported by the government in the form of agricultural subsidies. (And it should also be noted that I’m referring the US here, not the UK.)

But PETA’s main point is this:

“As a parent, you want your children to live full, productive and happy lives. So isn’t it about time you stopped feeding them a diet which leads them down the path of misery, morbid obesity and playground mockery? Stuffing your kids full of burgers and bangers will not only make them fat and lethargic – it may also set them up for a host of health problems, including heart disease, diabetes and several types of cancer. In fact, kids as young as 3 have shown signs of clogged arteries!”

PETA should have led with the health problems since they are far more important and relevant. Increasing your kids’ risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer through meat-eating is serious and could easily be considered child abuse since vegan foods are easily available. There’s no reason to feed children meat. As a parent, you can’t ensure that your child isn’t exposed to disease, but you can limit their exposure. For example, you might not be able to move out of Louisiana’s cancer alley, but you can serve healthy meals to your children.

My problem isn’t with the concept. I agree that feeding kids unhealthy foods, such as meat, is a form of abuse. To be sure, I don’t think it’s the worst type of abuse and I certainly wouldn’t support diverting funds away from prevention of other, more traumatizing forms of child abuse in order to prevent this type of child abuse. But I do agree with PETA that feeding children meat is a type of child abuse. My real problem with the ads is the fat shaming.

PETA’s fat shaming is unacceptable. The campaign should not be “Fight The Fat” and instead should be “Prevent Disease.” While there is a causal link between meat-eating and obesity for many people, there are plenty of fat vegetarians and vegans. I know them. In fact, my BMI places me in the “overweight category.” PETA tends to overlook us fat veggies and our objections to their claims that vegetarianism necessarily results in weight loss.

Statements like “fight the fat” are direct attacks on all fat people: meat-eaters AND vegans alike. It’s as though PETA’s campaign thinks “playground mockery” is acceptable when it’s done against fat kids. Well, it’s not. Bullying is wrong. Fat shaming is not OK. From Healing Trauma In Ourselves And Our World - part 1:

“We have to be willing to dig deep into our personal and collective histories, to face squarely the fact that it is never “okay” or excusable for a child to be ridiculed, slapped, ignored, talked down to, manipulated, made to feel ashamed, or otherwise mistreated, and that such mistreatment leaves lasting scars and baggage that are not always apparent at first glance.”

PETA’s ad campaign could very easily be interpreted, particularly to children reading the billboards, to mean ‘fight the fat kids’ and ‘bully the burger-eater.’ PETA should be a bit more careful.

This and some other PETA campaigns tend to ignore the reality that vegetarianism and veganism does not make everyone skinny. Certainly, vegetarianism and veganism are much healthier than meat-eating and many people will lose weight on a veg*n diet, but not everyone. The ones who do, usually lose weight because their omnivorous diet was excessively high in calories and their new veg diet is unintentionally lower in calories. Increased fiber from fruits and veggies helps with weight loss, but it can only do so much. So, if someone switches from a low meat diet to a no meat diet, they might not see any weight loss. Likewise, if someone switches from vegetarianism with low diary/eggs to veganism, they’re unlikely to see weight loss. (That last example represents me.) Moreover, gradual changes are less likely to result in significant weight loss than dramatic change because the body compensates. (Point being: if you want to lose weight, go vegan cold turkey and cut calories. But remember, you’ll still probably need to exercise, too.)

By ignoring the basic premises of weight loss - reduced caloric intake and/or increased caloric expenditure (diet and exercise) - PETA encourages unrealistic expectations for people converting from an omnivorous diet to an herbivorous diet. News flash: if you eat the same amount of calories and don’t increase your exercise, you won’t lose weight. It’s just that simple. PETA’s promotion of vegetarianism = weight loss can backfire and wind up with a lot of disappointed people who care more about weight loss than animals so they go back to eating meat. That doesn’t help animals, much, does it? All the while, the promotion of fat shaming hurts all fat people.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Family, Kids, & Friends, veganism 

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Comments

6 Responses to “Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse”

  1. Joselle Palacios on May 5th, 2008 10:54 am

    This and reading about PETA singling out Kentucky Derby jockey instead of the entire horse racing industry, which abuses and exploits both the horses and the jockeys, has PETA on my shit list today. They do so much good and their online resources are superb but stunts like this is why many people will dismiss animal rights. PETA is, sometimes unfortunately, synonymous with the entire movement. Unfair but true in many eyes.

    That poster is offensive and inflammatory. It’s cruel to fat people (particularly fat children, of which I was one and being a fat kid fucking sucks) and it doesn’t make parents want to listen because who wants to listen to someone calling you abusive?

    Also, although you’ve clearly stated that calories count when losing weight, I must reemphasize that point since earlier in this post you say going vegan cold turkey can accelerate weight loss. I disagree. If you go vegan by living totally on fruits and veggies, sure, you could lose weight. But most people won’t do that. They’ll probably eat more grains and bread and vegan treats and tofu (if not portion-controlled, it contains lots of fat). This is why I’ve actually GAINED 15 pounds since going vegetarian and why I lost a ton of weight eating a lot of meat.

    Fat shaming is gross. But beyond that, it’s just inaccurate for PETA (or the authors of Skinny Bitch) to say going vegetarian or vegan is a magical health bullet. The real culprits for weight gain and obesity in most developed countries is processed foods (of which there is plenty for vegans), desk jobs, cars, overall decreased mobility, lots of available food, and plain old biological drive. All animals–human and nonhuman alike–like to eat. And they like to eat lots of yummy stuff if its around. You have a dog. You know that. :)

  2. Elaine Vigneault on May 5th, 2008 2:00 pm

    Well, I won’t jump on the PETA-hating bandwagon. I think they’ve done far more good than bad. And I also think their courage is just wonderful.

    I’m not sure that accusing people of child abuse makes them stop thinking. Certainly plenty of people react poorly in the short term to negativity, but in the long term when coupled with positivity, it might not be such a bad thing. Lots of people don’t think about anything until you get confrontational with them. They just ignore, ignore, ignore… until they can’t ignore it any longer because it’s too damn annoying/negative/offensive…

    You said: “stunts like this is why many people will dismiss animal rights.”
    I’m not sure that’s true. The movement has been growing steadily over the years and PETA has a lot more members now than they had ten years ago. I don’t think public sentiment is discounting animal rights nearly as much as they used to. Whether or not that’s PETA’s fault who knows? But I just don’t think they’re seriously hurting the movement with stunts like these. The fat shaming is bad, but the overall concept is good.

    About going vegan cold turkey: Obviously, mileage may vary. All the people I know who lost weight when they went vegetarian or vegan lost weight when they did it suddenly. I think there are three reasons why they lost weight:
    1. They stopped eating very unhealthy foods like pizza and burgers all the time.
    2. They didn’t “replace” those foods with anything new; they just ate more of the good stuff they were already eating.
    3. They were trying to lose weight. So they deliberately chose things like soups over breads.

    But just to be safe, I’ll edit my post to change that section.

  3. glt on May 6th, 2008 1:08 am

    News flash: if you eat the same amount of calories and don’t increase your exercise, you won’t lose weight. It’s just that simple.

    And if you do cut calories and increase exercise, you might not lose weight anyway. And if you do lose weight, it will probably come back. Because dieting is basically hopeless.

    In my experience, I lost a little bit of weight when I finally gave up dairy and moved somewhere I didn’t have a car. But there was no significant long-term change, and I’ve seen no difference between periods when I eat more and periods when I eat less.

  4. Joselle Palacios on May 6th, 2008 8:59 am

    I just want to clarify, I don’t hate PETA. I appreciate what they’ve done–especially undercover films. But I don’t agree with this poster nor do I think it will be effective in changing the minds of those it seeks to change.

    Also, I didn’t mean to imply that, in my case, going vegetarian was the sole cause for my weight gain. Several factors were at play including: (1) being more hungry not eating meat. I don’t mean to imply that you need meat to be full. Eating just meat would leave me hungry when I ate it. It’s just getting used to not eating something–whatever it is–that was a huge part of my diet and overcompensating with more nuts, avocado and starch than I did before; (2) eating out more with my new boyfriend; (3) stopped running and exercised less frequently; (4) a point glt touches on, which is, I would probably have gained those 15 lbs no matter what. I believe my body’s set point is higher than a person who is naturally thin. I put on weight easily and really struggle to keep it off.

  5. warwak on May 6th, 2008 11:09 pm

    You are correct - I like it!

    As far as the message. The message is go vegan and you’ll fight off having fat children - I think that is much better advise than schools give when they advertise with their Milk Mustache posters hanging in the children’s faces day after day, year after year, promoting weight loss, bone strength, and muscle mass - now there is a bunch of lies. If PETA wants to promote something closer to the truth, I say awesome. It is not the perfect ad; but, it is effective for some as it has people talking

  6. FashionableNerd on May 7th, 2008 8:19 pm

    First, let me second this:
    And if you do cut calories and increase exercise, you might not lose weight anyway. And if you do lose weight, it will probably come back. Because dieting is basically hopeless.

    Also, as a meat eater, it is interesting to see the flip side of the coin (that rant you see on the blog isn’t mine, but my co-blogger’s) as far as meat being considered child abuse. I can totally understand your point, even though I don’t agree with that.

    Now, I’m no proponent of PETA on any level, as I was done with them after the whole “I’d rather go naked” stunt. My issue with them (as far as this campaign is concerned) is that they’re holding veganism as this magic bullet to weight loss, and as I’m sure we’re all well aware, there is absolutely no such thing as a magic bullet.

    So, what am I saying here? If you want to champion veganism/vegetarianism as a healthy lifestyle (and it is indeed) that’s fine, but don’t make it into some miracle product. And don’t use posters like these to shame folks into taking that point of view. If it’s gonna be about treating animals ethically and living healthily, then let it be that. Not some weight-loss quick scheme.

    FashionableNerd’s last blog post..PETA Abuses my Brain Cells

1 Trackbacks to “Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse”

  1. Anti-Animal Bloggers : Elaine Vigneault on September 27th, 2008 1:13 pm

    [...] and PETA’s fat shaming is unacceptable. The campaign should not be “Fight The Fat” and instead should be “Prevent Disease.” While there is a causal link between meat-eating and obesity for many people, there are plenty of fat vegetarians and vegans.[...] Statements like “fight the fat” are direct attacks on all fat people: meat-eaters AND vegans alike. It’s as though PETA’s campaign thinks “playground mockery” is acceptable when it’s done against fat kids. Well, it’s not. Bullying is wrong. Fat shaming is not OK. [...]PETA’s ad campaign could very easily be interpreted, particularly to children reading the billboards, to mean ‘fight the fat kids’ and ‘bully the burger-eater.’ PETA should be a bit more careful.(source) [...]

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