Babysitters, Tofu, Sesame Street, and School Lunches

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Food and Recipes, Media, Vegan

Published September 23, 2009 @ 07:03AM PT

I was a grade-school fan of the Baby-Sitters Club books. (In my defense, the books I remember most from that same time period are Island of the Blue Dolphins and Bridge to Terabithia, not Baby-Sitters Club.) I mention this here because in the series, one of the club members was a vegetarian (I think). And in at least one of these books, the word "tofu" came up. I had no idea what this was -- and continued not knowing for years. Likely because of whatever the context (or dish) was when the tofu was mentioned, I spent a decade thinking it was some kind of weird, healthy-but-disgusting casserole. I'm pretty sure I was nearing the end of college before I had a clue; I had only one truly vegetarian friend in college (whom I teased -- yeah, I was that person), but I don't recall her ever mentioning, never mind eating, tofu. And I'd graduated by the time I tried it for the first time, in some Thai takeout.

Maybe I wouldn't have been so oblivious if I'd not grown up in a rural area and in a meat-and-potatoes family and community that knew all about raising animals for slaughter but to whom even "vegetarian," let alone "vegan," was a baffling, almost blasphemous concept. But I am also absolutely convinced that much has changed in the last couple decades, that adults and kids alike are more aware of what's out there in the way of non-animal foods, not only for health reasons, but also because of growing awareness of animals, who they are, and what we do to them in the name of "food."

Even Sesame Street is making the youngest of kids aware of their non-animal options: I was quite tickled last night to see a tofu-positive, assumption-countering video from Sesame Street's Web site, wherein the girl in the girl-boy pair not only sings the praises of tofu, but also challenges her buddy's automatic "eww" reaction -- and changes his mind. There's no embedding option available, but go check it out at the Sesame Street site itself. Pretty cute stuff.

One cute, encouraging animated video doesn't cut it, though. The notion that animals are "just animals" and that dogs are friends and pigs are food -- and that the animals people choose to eat are just some class of unfeeling, unthinking automatons -- and so on is ingrained in the majority of children from the time they are very small, which is why it takes so long for many of us to snap out of that mindset. And too often, even when kids have their lightbulb moment and realize they don't want to eat animals anymore, their parents refuse to allow them that choice, often because they themselves have been led to believe, for years, that animal products are necessary for good health. But I do think we're making progress there too. Even if the inaccurate views of animals aren't changing as quickly as we'd like, the awareness of health issues connected to animal products seems to be rapidly spreading.

But of course, beyond the need to educate kids and their parents both, there's also the problem of kids' access to non-animal foods still. A Sesame Street segment that encourages kids to eat healthy fresh vegetables and fruits and even tofu, for example, would be a lot more effective if kids actually had those options where they eat one or two of their meals every weekday. Looking back, I can't imagine what I would have eaten from the cafeteria, from grade school through high school, if I'd wanted non-animal meals. So if you haven't signed the petition calling on Congress to mandate healthy vegan lunch options in schools, now's the time.

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Photo of pineapple tofu by Flickr user momomomo

Hat tip to the PETA Living blog for the Sesame Street video