Guilting Parents

New Rx for Kids is a Tough Pill for This Dad to Swallow
Posted on: Monday, 14 July 2008, 09:00 CDT

My daughter Kaitlyn is 8 years old. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, she's ready for cholesterol-lowering drugs. Yes, you read that right. In a move that has left many parents incredulous, the nation's pediatricians recently issued new guidelines calling for cholesterol screening of children as young as 2 _ and cholesterol drugs for kids as young as 8. Without intervention, the doctors say, today's overweight youngsters are doomed to become tomorrow's heart patients.

Do we really want to start our kids off on a decades-long regimen of drugs usually reserved for retirees?

A better solution, I think, is to teach kids to eat their veggies. Kaitlyn and her older sister, Gabriella, who is 13, are both vegetarian. Simply by eliminating meat from their diet, my daughters' risk of obesity and heart disease has been slashed. Studies show that meat-eaters are four times as likely to be obese as vegetarians are _ and 10 times more likely to suffer from heart disease. Read More

In an attempt to further push their anti-agriculture agenda, PETA is trying to guilt parents into forcing their children to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. They are trying to convince parents that if you don’t have your children on a vegetarian diet that they will certainly suffer from a host of diseases and it will be your fault. The truth is that parents should encourage their children to eat a balanced diet and be active.