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Friday, August 24, 2007

A Meaty Discussion

Husband and I brought Marguerite to her pediatrician yesterday. The doctor, a lovely lovely woman, practices natural medicine as well so I am very confident of her expertise and integrity (I have a feeling that she's "impervious" to pharmaceutical or infant product companies as per her views on vaccination and baby food. With regards to toys, she merely advised to try and get wooden ones as they are more sensorily and mentally stimulating than plastic ones. This was fine. Husband and I prefer the vintage/classic types anyway.:-p). The visit was just our daughter's monthly well-baby check-up and we're glad to note that God continues to bless us with a healthy child.
When the routine inspection was over and we were merely chatting as the doctor wrote notes in Marguerite's baby book, the conversation turned to the baby's diet. She had already included meat in the list of possible solids for Marguerite, but understood why I still wasn't giving any to my daughter. I have the impression from what she had mentioned in previous visits that she herself is a pesco-vegetarian. It was at this point when Husband brought up something that somebody had pointed out to him. He wanted to know whether it was true that meat consumption can benefit human teeth. The doctor has never heard of that one. She said that teeth need such things as calcium and fluoride, but meat isn't necessary for those. This, in turn, reminded me of something that I had read in one of my message boards. A member had posted about her toddler's recent proneness to throwing tantrums and one of the others replied with two possible reasons: TV time and protein intake. As to the protein, she wrote that she'd read that lack of fat or protein could affect the frontal lobe of the brain, which could then make an individual lose control, resulting pretty much in "animal behavior". When I sounded the doctor out on this, relating protein to meat, she told me that what she knew to be true was sort of the opposite: that eating meat could be cause for animalistic behavior, that it had something to do with the rush of adrenalin at the time of slaughter, which remains in the flesh of the animal and is then consumed by humans. This probably explains why most vegetarians are more "zen" than meat-eaters.
When we got home, I thought that this was something that I wanted to look into, so I googled away. Not that the doctor needed vindication as she clearly bore more authority, but I was still happy to note that all of my searches so far confirmed what she had said, while I couldn't find anything to support the other arguments. If you know something to the contrary or perhaps would simply like to second what the good doctor said, please leave a comment or a link to this subject. I remain interested. Thanks.:-)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is your doctor, dr. chen?
aren't the toys in her clinics the coolest?


rinna

spinninglovelydays said...

that's right, rinna; and yes, they are. that was the first thing dh commented on after our first visit with her.:)

Ren said...

I think it's good to question anything and everyone, especially doctors no matter how natural they are!!:)

But, I have raised more than one baby on no meat. I do believe that protein and fat are very important for growing children, but there are plenty of sources that don't include animal flesh.

Raw nuts (once they're older of course) avacado, tofu, meat substitutes, organic eggs, hummus and many other foods can provide all that is needed.

None of my children ate meat until around four years of age. They are all healthy and mostly vegetarian.:)

spinninglovelydays said...

lol about questioning doctors ESPECIALLY :) i really like our pedi, but it's always a good idea to find out more for myself. anyway, keeping dd vegetarian as long as possible is the plan.
thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment, ren! :)