Why My Baby Doesn't Eat Animals

Having a child means that you, as a parent, wield incredible power. You can dress your baby exclusively in green, or never let her hear Simon & Garfunkel (as if) or Iggy Azalea (oops, I wish). Arguably the greatest power arrives with the introduction of “solid food” into your baby’s mouth, around the time they are six months old. I thought for a very long time, even talking it over with friends, about what Zelda’s first food should be. I was told by my doctor to start with something naturally mushy. I settled on a daily vacillation between the avocado and the banana.

Zelda didn’t want to wait until she was six months old. By the time she was four-and-a-half months old, she was trying to grab food from my hands, or off of my plate. So, one afternoon, in a less momentous fashion than I had imagined, I mashed up both an avocado and a banana and offered them to her, minutes apart. She took the spoon from me and hoisted it into her mouth herself. She made a face, but she was also “chewing” as she handed the spoon back to me for a refill. A lot of what I gave her on the spoon fell out of her mouth and onto the floor, where the dog was anxiously waiting. But Zelda clearly understood the ritual: The next day, when I fed her sweet potato which I had peeled, steamed, and pureed, more went in — and stayed in. In less than a week, she’d been introduced to green beans, peas, carrots, and leeks (which I steamed with a small piece of potato and pureed for her).

Now, at eight months old, with just two teeth, Zelda can chomp down anything you hand over, in smallish chunks. She likes her food pureed or not, warm or not. Toast, strawberries, steamed broccoli, pasta noodles. She eats a lot, usually feeding herself, and often sharing with the dog. The one thing Zelda has never tasted, however, is an animal.

All children love animals. From the time they’re born, their rooms are festooned with stuffed ones; their books are filled with talking ones; their clothes are plastered in them. Birds, giraffes, elephants, sharks, octopi. The whole ark is found in a child’s life, and even before they can walk or talk, they recognize and smile at the family dog, or a stuffed monkey. They recognize a face, whether it’s animated or human or not.

I distinctly remember the day that I put two and two together about the truth of eating animals. I was in second grade, and to be honest, I didn’t do the addition on my own. My teacher plainly announced to my class that hamburgers were made from ground up cows. She was an obese woman, and I don’t know if she was a vegetarian; I remember that her favorite food was blueberries. There was some discussion of this amongst my classmates, I am sure, but I don’t remember because I was finishing up the math in my head, and within my stomach was a sinking feeling that I had known the truth for some time.

I went home that night and at dinner, my mother served something which was made of beef. “What animal is this?” I asked. At the time, I thought the look that came across her face was anger, but now my guess is that it was an “oh shit” moment, surrounded as she was by my three brothers who would also have questions. At my house, you ate what was put in front of you. It has to be this way in a family of six; the only successful stand I ever recall making was one against split pea soup when I was about five years old.

My mother told me we would talk about it after dinner, and we did. We had a long discussion about chickens and pigs and cows, and even deer, because there were hunters in my family. Roast? That’s beef. Bacon? Pig. Ham? Also pig. It was eye-opening and fascinating to me, and my mother patiently explained it all. If my mother were alive and I asked her about this day, I’m sure she wouldn’t even remember it ever happening, but it was a life-changing event for me, and it started a lifelong, very complicated relationship with meat eating.

I didn’t stop eating meat for the first time until I was in middle school. My mother supported me: She didn’t make special food for me, but she allowed me to not eat the meat she served, and made sure there were enough other things on offer that I could consume without suffering from malnutrition. I don’t know how long this phase lasted, probably not very long. I stopped eating meat again in high school, and then college. Sometimes these periods lasted a year or two, sometimes just a few months. But it was always for the same reason: I love animals. I don’t think of it as a “political” decision, because even in the best farming scenarios, I would still have trouble choking down something which I know had had feelings, thoughts, a life worth living.

The last time I ate an animal was in June of 2008, if I gloss over the one fish sandwich I devoured, guilt-free, while seven months pregnant. I was surfing the web and found a story in the Daily Mail about a little pig named Cinders who lived on a pig farm North Yorkshire. Cinders was afraid of mud, so her owners had gotten her four little rubber boots, which she wore and happily trotted around the farm in. That was it for me.

When I was pregnant, I assumed that like our family, Zelda wouldn’t eat meat, but I didn’t have reasons for it other than, “Well, she’ll eat what I eat.” My doctors assured me that baby vegetarians, like adult human ones, are just as healthy — and often healthier — than meat eaters. After Zelda was born, however, still a little thing, swaddled up all tightly, I realized that I had the opportunity to give her a very precious gift — to my mind — an opportunity which I’d never had.

If I never fed her an animal, or allowed anyone else to, I realized, she will never have to learn the truth about eating animals and feel like she’s been cheated or lied to. She’ll never have to feel guilt or confusion about it, or anger towards me, her mother, who had been lovingly spoon-feeding her the same precious animals she cuddles every morning when she wakes up. She’ll get to make that decision herself when she is old enough to understand what it means, like many others.

I don’t harbor any illusions about the fragility of children. They are often better at accepting harsh realities than adults. I remember clearly being six years old when a great aunt died, worrying over my brother who was sixteen months younger than me. I was born old, a worrier to the core, so rather than wallowing in my own sadness, I bit my lip and thought to myself, “How are we going to explain this to him? What will he think?” “She’s dead,” I overheard him telling our even younger brother. “That means we won’t ever see her anymore, and she’s done living.” So I know Zelda will probably get to the age of four of five or whatever, and I’ll explain to her that most people kill, cook up, and eat her beloved pigs, chickens, and cows. I’ll expect sadness or confusion or anger, but I know it’s so possible — likely, even — that she’ll look up to me and say, “Let’s have the chicken tonight, then.”

I love to cook. I still cook a turkey every year for Thanksgiving, because I love having large groups of people over for holidays and occasions, and I have no interest in foisting my eating habits upon the adult masses. Cooking is about sharing and joy and love. Eating with my daughter, even at the messy age of eight months old, is a joyful experience I am grateful to have day in, day out. So, when she’s grown up, she can eat whatever she wants, and I’ll happily cook up Cinders for her if she likes. Until then, we’ll just keep talking to the animals, and sharing our plums with the dog.

Author’s Note: Everything in parenting now has a hilarious and often confusing name applied to it. The technique which I have used to begin feeding my daughter food is known as “Baby Led Weaning,” which involves giving a baby, even at six months old, actual food which hasn’t been pureed, to experiment and chomp away at at will. A piece of bread, a frond of steamed broccoli, a cooked rigatoni, anything goes. Choking hazards to babies of this age, the wisdom goes, have been vastly overstated. I have found this to be true of my own daughter, though, as with everything, I’m not religious about it and also feed her plenty of pureed food, too.

THE PARENT RAP is an endearing new column about the fucked up and cruel world of parenting.

Laura June is a writer and a very cool mom. She is also the author of “The Hunger Games.”

Photo by Michael Choi