Happy winter everyone! Remember this time last year?  That surreal, post-lockdown time, where we were all trying to come to grips with the reality of a worldwide pandemic, while simultaneously realising how fortunate we were in New Zealand to be getting it under control.  The onset of winter 2020 made things a bit more daunting and I’m sure it was a good reminder for us all to pay attention to diet and lifestyle choices, in order to be as robust and healthy as possible in preparation for any hiccups we might have had to face while getting though that winter.  

I’m very grateful my children and I generally enjoy very good health and I certainly empathise with anyone battling with health issues of any kind as winter sets in for 2021.

At the time of my first column being published in Vegetarian Living NZ, in the summer of 2011, my boys were aged one and three.  In the several years previously, I had been through two rounds of IVF, two pregnancies, two births and successfully introduced solid food to two healthy baby boys.  My children were very much wanted and strived for and I worked hard, through determination, research and instinct, to make sure they were getting everything they needed to start them off in life, including the correct nutrition.

As a vegetarian, I came up against protestations and advice from professionals, such as doctors, midwives and well-meaning nurses on quite a few occasions, telling me it wasn’t possible to have a healthy pregnancy and raise children without consuming meat.  At other times, I came up against friends, colleagues and even strangers offering similar well-meaning but uninformed advice. 

From the time I became pregnant, through to introducing solid food to the babies and through the first few years of school, there were people who questioned whether I was being a responsible parent by allowing my children to go without eating meat.  That can be hard to take.

I don’t have bad feelings towards any of those people.  It’s normal for people to be nervous about things they’re not familiar with.  However, it can be quite daunting and it serves to illustrate some of the types of things my children will need to deal with as they grow up.  I’m sure they will have it easier than I did as a teenager in the 1980s.  This millennium seems to be much more familiar with plant-based foods and accepting of people making a variety of choices about how to live their lives.

My children are now 11 and 12.  They’re strong, healthy, well-adjusted boys, hurtling towards their teenage years, high school and everything which comes with the next stage of life.  They have their own identities, they know their own minds and they’re both happy and proud to be lifelong vegetarians. 

Now they will need to spend more time out in the world, without their mother, navigating their own way through the well-meaning advice of authority figures, friends and strangers, some of whom won’t understand that it’s OK not to eat meat and that it’s a choice which is nobody’s business but their own.  I hope I have taught them how to handle themselves in a polite and respectful manner in the face of criticism, and how to be assertive yet calm when being pressured to partake in anything they don’t feel comfortable with, whether it be eating meat or taking drugs.

I hope they continue to grow into intelligent young men who can handle bumps in the road and balls thrown from left field.  So far on their journey of life, I’m proud to say they’re well on the way to becoming great vegetarian men.