Actual headline in my local paper yesterday –
Balanced Vegetarian Diet Possible
Holy cow! There’s breaking news for ya. I always wonder who these type of articles are aimed towards. But now I think I know. I had a lady in the office the other day with the most warped ideas of healthy eating I’ve ever heard. She wanted to know what healthy food she could give her dog as training treats. I said that if he would eat them he could have pieces of vegetable because it won’t add a lot of calories or fat to his diet. She was horrified. She told me that there was no way a dog could eat vegetables. Humans have a very hard time digesting vegetables, don’t you know. She almost gave the impression that they may in fact be deadly if you aren’t careful.
Then she showed me a can of stuff that reminded me of spray cheese but peanut butter flavored. She asked if instead of that she could give him some regular peanut butter. I said that was fine in moderation. They she asked in a most doleful voice, “It would probably be really bad for him if I gave him the all-natural kind, right?” I said that natural is better than artificial. She looked very doubtful and seemed to be questioning my sanity as much as I was questioning hers.
Then last night I watched the new TOP CHEF show on Bravo. One of the dishes made was a pumpkin lasagna served in a little pumpkin shell. It was, gasp!, vegetarian. It actually did well but one of the judges gave it the (high?) praise of, “It held up as well as the dishes that contained meat.” Not a vegetarian-embracing crowd there.
i can’t do that. it messes up ur whole system if ur too young. you NEED protein and protein bars don’t cut it. but what the hey. i don’t eat a lot, but there is an over populaton of cows anyway but rock on if ur a veggetarian cuz i can’t be.
*laughs* People are funny. When they find out that my dogs are 7, they regularly ask in awe “what type of dog food do you feed them?”, because the pups are in great shape (no white hairs, they’re shiny, their teeth are clean, their eyes glisten, they don’t smell like dogs, and they’re muscle-bound and not overweight in the slightest) And upon hearing that they don’t eat dog food, and getting a list of what they DO eat, they do an about-face and go from “your dogs are healthy and beautiful” to “OMG! YOU ARE GOING TO KILL THEM!!!” (Because the diet is high on vegetables and whole grains, and relatively low on meat during parts of the year)
The thing about the spray-peanut butter cracked me up. I run into that attitude all the time. It’s no wonder this country has such crappy weight/nutrition issues. No one knows what’s healthy and what isn’t anymore.
Why do people ask a professional for advice when they have no intention of listening to that advice AT ALL? Weird!