Talking to your kids about being Vegetarian

This post first appeared on Water, No Ice (www.waternoice.com)

Like lots of Indians, I was brought up vegetarian by my vegetarian parents. When I reached adulthood, I stayed vegetarian, and even experimented for a few years with its more extreme version - becoming vegan. My wife is vegetarian too, so our 5-year-old son doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. At this time. Or so we think.

The first big dilemma we faced is whether we should bring him up vegetarian or not - at least till the age of 18, at which point he's free to make his own choices. Several friends (most of them non-vegetarian) feel we're being unfair; denying him choices and biasing him so that he's more likely to stay vegetarian at 18 than turn non-veg. If fact, for this same reason, some of our vegetarian friends allow their kids to eat the occasional Chicken Nugget.

The second, more frequently faced dilemma, is how to answer his innocent question about why he can't also get a plate of Chicken Nuggets when we're eating with friends at a restaurant. We grope for an answer that his 5-year old mind can grasp, and yet one that does not cause him to judge his meat-eating friends harshly.

There were several approaches available to us, ranging from diktat ("This is the way it is") to empathy ("We like animals and don't like to kill and eat them"). Explanations based on distant religious diktats ("We don't eat meat because we're Hindus") were unlikely to cut much ice, given that we're not at all religious in the first place. The health benefits are perhaps too complex for a 5-year-old to grasp.

We chose the empathy argument, and thus far, it has worked well. He showed a natural affinity for animals in general, and farm animals in particular. The occasional trip to Ardenwood Farm, Happy Hollow Park or Lemos Farm in Half Moon Bay to gaze at the benign goats or chicken reinforced that affection. It also increased his recognition that these animals were sentient beings with feelings and emotions and therefore, killing them was wrong.

If fact, Vegan society websites recommend this sort of approach, but their tone strikes me as being too strident, too righteous. I fear that when he views his and his friends' actions through this lens, he'll end up judging himself "good" and his friends "bad". That's not the sort of judgmental attitude I'd like him to develop. I try to keep emphasizing that his friends are free to make their own decisions, but I dread the day when he asks a friend "How can you kill and eat an animal?"

Suggestions, anyone?

Stay in School, Live Longer

This article first appeared at Water, No Ice (www.waternoice.com).

I was in India on a business trip recently and some friends took me to a night club in Bandra. It was Friday evening, and while the place was relatively empty when we got there at 9 pm, it quickly filled up with young office workers in their twenties and thirties. Since smoking in bars is not prohibited in India (or at least not enforced), the entire place quickly acquired a thick haze of cigarette smoke. What was particularly striking was the number of women who were lighting up. Over the years, smoking seems to have become especially fashionable among young professionals in general, and women in particular. Anecdotally, smoking rates in general seem much higher there; I have few friends who smoke here in the US, but in India, I frequently ran into colleagues on their way out of the building for a smoke, or on their way back from one.

A recent New York Times article talks about the strong correlation between years spent in school and life expectancy. Interestingly, researchers have found much lower levels of correlation between race, or wealth, and longevity; education stands out as the single largest factor.

So what marks the difference between the more vs. the less educated? There is established research that shows that people with more education are better able to plan and to delay gratification. But the one statistic that jumped out at me was the % of people who smoke - 45% of people who never went to school, while just 10% of those with 16-18 or more years of education light up. This one factor showed the greatest difference between the two groups.

Frankly, the link between smoking and life expectancy is nothing new: just try getting life insurance and see what happens to your premium if you are a smoker. What was fascinating is that smoking is significantly lower among educated people, with a correspondingly higher life expectancy.

So back to my co-workers in India. These are folks who have at least a graduate degree, if not a Masters. Why don't they fit in with the pattern that the New York Times study found? To find out, I asked a few smoker friends what made them light up. It was fascinating to find that attitudes to smoking mirrored a 1947 study I found on the web.

They ranged from Fun or Reward on one end of the spectrum - people treat smoking as an adult substitute for the carefree enjoyment they knew as children, and as a reward that they could give themselves as often as they wished.

Some people spoke about cigarettes being a companion when they were alone, and brought back pleasant memories in the past (that were often also associated with smoking).

While few smokers will admit it, smoking is often a part of one's imagined or desired personality - the 'Coolness' factor. TV and Movies reinforce these images in the pop-culture.

At the other end of the spectrum, the most commonly quoted reason was that smoking was a stress-buster - "it helps me think" or helps me blow my troubles away.

Finally, almost everyone we know has tried to quit or reduce his / her smoking at some point. Everyone worries that they're smoking too much. Some can, others can't.

What made is easier for smokers (especially educated ones) in the US to quit? I think that here in the US, several difficult factors have made it more difficult to smoke and by corollary, easier to quit. Widespread awareness of the health effects of smoking, high prices of cigarettes due to high taxes, bans (that are enforced) on smoking in offices and public places, the easy availability of alternatives such as nicotine patches or gum, and a significant reduction in portrayal of smoking in the popular media, have helped reduce the incidence of smoking (among the more educated, at least).

India's begun to move in that direction, how quickly is still a matter of debate.