Dinner Time Science and Vegetarians

The little guy has been on a vegetarian crusade for a few months now. Sausages excluded. According to toddler logic, sausages are actually vegetables. Sure, I know you can get vegetarian sausages, but to be honest I prefer my meals newspaper free.

Anyway, we were eating dinner the other night and we got to the meat issue once again. Got to say I almost felt like I was being mocked, we had been cooking a boneless lam roast in the BBQ for the last four hours, it was delicious. To us perhaps.

‘I don’t like the meat’

He says, before even having a bite. He is not usually a fussy eater by any means, but the additional chewing effort and texture of meat has just turned him off. Fair enough I guess. We are actually at a point where we allow him to chew pieces up, ‘turn them into sausage’ and spit them out. Bit of a compromise, but it is a start.

A few days previous to this occasion, I was explaining to food pyramid to him. Not to much success, but it is better to start early right? Went through a few foods he knew and explained where they fit. ‘You need to eat a balance of these because it’s good for you. That kind of stuff.

Ok, back to the lamb. My partner must have had a burst of inspiration, and in that moment explained meat contained iron. The little guy has an obsession with superheros at the moment, Ironman in particular.

Well, Ironman is made of iron. Meat has iron in it, if you want to be big and strong like Ironman, you should eat your meat.

Seemed like a valid enough idea. He took to it, kind of. We then went into a bit of a science lesson, why the fuck not. Tony Stark would have been pleased had he been there.

I explain how iron is in a thing called the periodic table of elements, and they make up everything. But they are so small we can’t see them.

‘They are like little tiny legos, everything is made of little elements, like legos’. The partners analogy was superb I think. 🙂

‘But if you look really close, you could see them’

He returns, ok we are going there. I then explain what a microscope is, and say maybe when he is a little older we can have a look at one. ‘Just like your toy pirate telescopes, but they look at little things instead.’

Don’t think we have won the meat battle, but the science crash course was good for a laugh. Who knows, he might absorb something. 🙂