Lettuce Grow Up to Be Healthy

As parents, we do everything that we can to raise happy, healthy children. We immunize them against diseases, we fret over their runny noses, and we consider it to be a national emergency when Junior has a fever. Unfortunately, many parents don’t know that they are risking their children’s health by feeding them drug-laden, meat-based diets instead of cholesterol-free vegetarian diets.

Feeding meat to your children will adversely affect their health in both the short and the long term. Meats are packed with hormones, dioxins, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and other contaminants. Some of the antibiotics that are found in chicken flesh are even arsenic-based. These chemicals are ingested by the animals who are exploited on factory farms and then accumulate in the flesh and fat of these animals. Herbicides and pesticides are also dumped on the crops that are fed to animals on factory farms—this means that these poisons are concentrated in the meat at a level that is 14 times higher than that found in vegetables.¹ Furthermore, since these toxins are in the animals’ flesh, it’s impossible to wash them away.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the consumption of meat causes 70 percent of the food poisoning cases in the United States each year. This is not surprising when you consider the fact that meat can be contaminated with a host of dangerous bacteria—including E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter.² Sadly, adults aren’t the only ones who feel the effects of this contaminated food. Recent outbreaks of E. coli have shown that these pathogens can be deadly when consumed by children.

Benjamin Spock, M.D., author of the highly acclaimed parenting guide Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, wrote, “Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some forms of cancer.”³

Indeed, the saturated fat and the complete lack of fiber in a flesh-based diet can make your child overweight and lethargic in the short term and can contribute to chronic illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer in the long term.

In contrast, a healthy vegetarian diet gives children all the protein, calcium, and vitamins that they need to be strong and healthy. Vegetarian kids have the opportunity to be free from the fat, cholesterol, and chemical toxins that are found in fish, chicken, pork, and other meats.

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