Plant power: How a month of vegetarian living changed our family’s diet forever
With her eight-year-old daughter expressing the wish to eat a plant-based diet, writer Yvonne Hogan decided the whole household would join in for Lent
Yvonne Hogan with her daughters Eloise (3) and Ava (8). Photos: Gerry Mooney
For as long as she has been able to talk, my daughter Ava, now eight, has expressed concern about eating meat. To go from watching Peppa Pig to a breakfast of sausages never sat well with her. We had many conversations in which I assured her that animals in Ireland are well treated before we eat them and when she was aged four or five, we made a pact that we wouldn’t eat lamb or other baby animals. That settled the issue for a while.
Then, Greta Thunberg happened. Like the rest of the world, my daughter was enchanted and emboldened by this powerhouse of a girl. Greta’s message that our meat-based diet was accelerating climate change and ‘stealing her future’ consolidated my daughter’s instincts that we, as a family, ate too much meat. And I couldn’t disagree with her.
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