Illustration by Ed Appleby
Opinions of a five-year-old carnivore
By Patrick Vaillancourt, Columnist
I love to eat. Eating has to be one of my favourite things in the whole world. It’s not the same as playing video games or watching cartoons, but it’s up there. But lately, Mommy has been trying to ruin the experience for me.
She keeps telling me to eat the vegetables on my plate, even if I don’t like them. I don’t understand why she makes me eat them. Mommy and Daddy don’t do things they don’t like to do, yet they make me eat these gross things. Carrots, spinach, cabbage—all of them get a great big “ewww” in my book.
Mommy says that I need to eat them to get big and strong, but that’s what milk is for. I like milk. Breakfast is the only time Mommy doesn’t make me eat veggies, so it has become my favourite meal of the day. I can eat any kind of cereal I want. Mommy buys me both Lucky Charms and Captain Crunch and I love to drink the milk from the bowl when all the cereal is gone. Sometimes, I put some chocolate syrup in the milk to make it a super special breakfast.
Mommy makes no sense sometimes. She says I have to eat my vegetables, and when I don’t, she tells me that I can’t have ice cream for dessert. But if she really wanted me to get big and strong, she’d still give me ice cream—it’s made of milk, after all.
It doesn’t make any sense. Mommy isn’t very big or strong, but she eats her disgusting vegetables. I think she might need to drink more milk. Daddy’s kind of strong, but he doesn’t eat vegetables. He once told me that he gets superhuman strength from the “wobbly pop” I’m not supposed to drink.
Mommy says that there are some people who only eat vegetables, but I think she is just lying. She says they are called “vegetarians,” but surely those types can’t exist. Only vegetables?! How laughable. Only cows and horses eat just vegetables—and I’m not even sure that grass is a vegetable.
Dinnertime is the worst. Mommy usually makes meat with some potatoes and veggies. I like the meat and the potatoes, but then she has to give me carrots and green beans. I eat the potatoes though—aren’t they vegetables too? When I don’t eat everything on my plate, she tries to guilt me by telling me to think of kids in some place called Africa. Well, if they love vegetables so much, maybe Mommy can mail mine to them.
The best dinners are when we go to the restaurant. I like pizza, but Mommy tries to ruin that too. I just want plain pepperoni and cheese, but she wants to have green peppers and onions on it. Why would someone want to ruin a perfectly good pizza?
I’m starting to think that life is going to be hard. I had a good thing going before Mommy made me start eating vegetables; now all I see is broccoli in my future.
