Infancy has always been associated with the ideals of vitality, innocence and tenderness. Regardless of race, gender or even species, the world feels the same about the young ones – we are all compassionate, forgiving and overly protective over them.
Babies, lambs, piglets, little baby fishes (fingerling), puppies, kittens, cubs, cherry tomatoes, baby pumpkins, baby carrots (do you see the pattern and where this is all leading?) and all other young ones (flora and fauna included) melt our hearts with their undeniable adorability. Perhaps it is something about their built – how they are all structured as perfect minuscule versions of adults. Everything in mini is always as cute as a button.
But sadly, eye candy and heart melter aren’t all these little minis (talking strictly in terms of animals and vegetables) end up being because among the lovers of culinary delights, little minis are also prime delicacy. Renowned for being juicy and tender – both key characteristics of good ingredients the young and immature are harvested before their time to satisfy the taste buds of food connoisseurs.
Now there’s two prominent ways in which this ‘delicacy of youths/babies’ impacts the world.
The first way is a through a confined society of animal lovers who would scream in horror at the sight of the young ones being dressed up for a dish. This is perhaps the loudest of protests we hear over the use of the young and immature ingredients (especially if they are farmed for that cause).
The second way is actually the most severe of impact and it will affect everyone through the shift of balance in the eco-system. Think about it, if our young are our future…would it not be logic to assume that the young of both animals (marine life included) and plants (like wild ginseng) to be their future as well? If we continue to harvest and consume them faster than they can grow, what will be left to continue the species/breed? And appreciating how appreciating how all lives on earth are co-related, the extinction of one species will slowly but surely lead to the extinction of another creating a disaster bound domino effect.
Yet all it takes for us to avoid creating the demise of the world’s precious and irreplaceable flora and fauna is simply that simple choice we make to say no to having minis on your plate.
Note: This article was written to be directed at immature food sources harvested directly from the wild and not the controlled environment of a farm. The fact that we have among us those with a taste for ‘exotic” food only encourages the problem because already they have created a demand now their adding preference to it.
I think this article is factually wrong, it does no harm at all to eat young vegetables, people don’t want stringy old stuff. As for animals if you are not happy about eating them don’t do so, but don’t imagine that any comercial farmer can afford to allow lambs to grow up and become mutton!
I don’t agree with the article and as far as it relates farmed animals and crops I don’t think the assumptions in the article were based on acurate research
The article wasn’t directed at farmed animals and vegetable but instead towards those harvested directly from the wild. If anything, one of the reasons farming is done is to act as a measure of protection against the effects of such acts. All that was meant about farming was how animals lovers would find it cruel to raise an animal to see it fill a plate.
There is severe impact when you harvest (from the wild) the immature/juvenile such as pauas (abalone), fish, octopus, even turtle eggs. Perhaps the harvest of immature food sources is more relevant/prominent in effect to ’seafoods’ than others but still the idea is when something is not a from a ’controlled’ environment and you consume them faster than they can reproduce to keep the numbers of their population, how can you say it will not lead to extinction? If there was no such issue what’s the buzz about unethical commercial fishing beside destroying the ocean floors or poaching?