Kids think cows lay eggs!

[philfox]

saw this on five news at lunch time, admin, please move if its in the wrong place/already a thread

http://news.five.tv/uk_news.asp?id=13569871

Thousands of British children think cows lay eggs, a survey has suggested.

Townies fared worst in the research designed to find out if kids know where their food comes from.

Dairy Farmers of Britain asked more than 1,000 children aged eight to 15 where they believed food like cheese, yoghurt and beef burgers originated.

Although knowledge improved with age, more than one in 10 (11%) of eight-year-olds did not know that pork chops come from pigs.

City children were almost three times as likely not know that beef burgers come from cows as their rural counterparts - 8% against 3%.

[RedWellies]

This doesn't surprise me at all. It's like that little boy who thought meat came from Tescos and milk came from a machine. Unless someone tells them otherwise, they couldn't be expected to know at a young age, especially if they have never seen a cow, pig, etc.

[philfox]

maybe, i guess it was different for me, as my mother told us from an early age, and i knew more about meat and differnt products than the kids who actually ate meat! but i think from a vegan/education point of view this is awful, i think if more kids were fully aware and they knew about different 'farming methods' they might make wiser choices. a lot of kids in hull, where i;m from didnt even know what a cow was when driving past on a school trip.

[RedWellies]

Yes, I agree, it is awful. My mum told me what was what and I lived in the countryside so I had an advantage. Children are growing up very ignorant of a lot of things these days. They can all use a computer/DVD player/ipod, etc but some don't know the basics such as good reading and writing skills, history, etc. A lot don't even know why we have "poppy day" which I find really sad. Maybe I'm just getting old!

[philfox]

nah, your not getting old! its just that kids aren't really staying young! i remember having a britains farm set when i was younger, and my brother always wanted to play it 'properly' until we saw animal farm when we were little, so in the end our farm had a big revolution and kicked al the people out. i remember the shepherd figure holding a baby lamb so we cut it out of his arms, poor thing had this hand stuck to it forever!
sorry for the off topic. although the report was by the dairy farmers of britain, i do think kids need far more of an education about food. getting kids to grw their own veg in schools would help them try new fruits and veg and maybe stop them being so picky too

[Cherry]

Yes, it is awful, and children should be taught far more about food. I'm always a little sceptical of these surveys of children though. "Thousands of British children think cows lay eggs, a survey has suggested." What does that actually mean? Does it mean that someone is hypothesising that that might be the case, or that one or two children thought that? For many children their everyday lives are completely baffling, and it's a miracle if they can match the name to the animal, let alone what it's called when it's chopped into pieces and sold in supermarkets. I mean, that IS a very crazy concept.

[Kevster]

Was listening to Radio 2 unfortunately this morning, but as it happened there was a lady talking to the presenter and she said maybe it's because people don't want to talk about where the 'food' on their plate actually comes from.

Of course there was some idiot rang in saying not to worry because pigs weren't important anyway, but still thought that was quite insightful, unusual for Radio 2.

[Klutz]

My kindy kids were born in Seoul and live in Seoul. They did not all know where milk, eggs, and various meats came from. I make sure that they know. However, it doesn't bother them to know. I doubt that any of them have ever actually met a cow, chicken, or pig and they certainly have no concept of death.

We are to take a field trip to the zoo in a couple of months. I REALLY don't want to go. Zoos in Korea are truly horrible and I know that I'll end up crying and then getting in trouble with the scool management. But, if there is a "petting zoo" like in America, I am SO going to take advantage of that opportunity to have the kids pet the animals and then remind them that when they eat beef, it comes from cows like this one, and so on. I have to do it gently as if I actually converted the kids, their parents would most likely be furious with me. I'll be happy if I can plant "seeds" in their minds and hearts so that they might go to veggie-ism later in life.

[DancingWillow]

i think parents either want to "protect" children by not telling them where meat comes from (since most children have a natural love for animals), or eating meat is so automatic for the parents, that they don't even think to explain it to their children. i wish my parents had told me earlier where meat came from.

[terrace max]

I help out with a school garden club. Of the eight children (all between 5 and 12) who attended yesterday, not one could identify the vegetable we were harvesting. It was a leek.

I guess ignorance is a pre-requisite of the standard Western diet.

[frank language]

I help out with a school garden club. Of the eight children (all between 5 and 12) who attended yesterday, not one could identify the vegetable we were harvesting. It was a leek.

I wouldn't have known that when I was 12; I didn't even know what an avocado was--or whether it was edible. We only had iceberg lettuce..."and we had to drink tea from a rolled-up newspaper."

[Imported Memory]

My sister was fairly young when she learned where her favourite food, beef, came from. She didn't understand the concept, however of how we got the meat from the cows. She assumed the meat were the "spots" (the ones seen on cows used for dairy) on the cows and when the meat was "ripe" it would fall off and the farmers would go out into the field to gather it.
Sadly, when she discovered this was not how things were done and that the cows had to be killed for her to enjoy their meat, she was upset for the longest time. She was young and didn't have any control over her diet at that age. She has long since forgotten this and still eats meat.

[Maisiepaisie]

It seems a lot of veg*ns learned where meat comes from at a young age. Perhaps this is what helped to make the change. I was 4 when my mum told me that animals were killed for meat. I can clearly remember that moment and how I felt. I was shocked and couldn't believe the awfulness of what she was telling me. I even thought this cannot be true. I only kept eating meat until I was 13 because I didn't like vegetables but the seed was planted the moment I found out.

[Hemlock]

..."and we had to drink tea from a rolled-up newspaper."

You were lucky...........

[steven1222]

It seems a lot of veg*ns learned where meat comes from at a young age. Perhaps this is what helped to make the change.

I doubt that. Newly-learned information is more likely to cause a change than something that has been known and tolerated for years, at least for me.