It is true, as many people have pointed out, that you can get all the requisite nutrients from a vegetarian and/or vegan diet. The issue here is that to do so requires more commitment to doing so than is required of those who are omnivores. Iron and calcium are not as readily available from plant sources; they are available, but it takes effort to make sure they are being absorbed in sufficient quantities. That's why stupid parents who are completely uninformed about nutrition but feed their babies a standard, omnivorous diet can manage to get adequate amounts of the crucial vitamins and minerals into them.

I would say that the majority of vegetarians I have known--my mom, my cousin, friends--have not put in the effort to make sure that they are getting sufficient amounts of vitamins and minerals. They rely on supplements, many of them, while subsisting off of questionable foods (my cousin doesn't even seem to eat vegetables--her diet seems to be cheese-based), but supplements do not absorb as readily as nutrients from actual food. In one case I have witnessed, a vegan mom attempted to feed her daughter only vegan foods, most of which her daughter would not eat, and so kept her alive, apparently, on fruit juice and vitamins. The girl was alive, although clearly malnourished, and was given "bad foods" like pasta and sandwiches (sometimes even with meat!) by friends of ours who babysat her often. As I said, the girl didn't die, and eventually family members staged an intervention, and she's doing well now. My point is that you won't hear of cases like this, because unless the baby dies or is hospitalized for malnourishment, it doesn't make the papers.

The problem isn't simply a vegan diet. It's an ideology that does not allow the vegan (or Atkins dieter or...any diet that comes with an ideology, I'd imagine) to recognize that the choices available to us as adults are not always good for children, that children may need meat to be able to get sufficient iron (for example), that when your child is clearly starving, you put down the ideology and feed them. The problem is stupidity and also laziness and also the shocking hold dietary ideology seems to have on our country. It just happens to be the case that, for lazy and stupid people, the omnivorous diet is an easy way to get a broad spectrum of nutrients without having to pay attention.

That's not to say, of course, that omnivorous parents do not abuse and neglect their children, whether through malevolence or stupidity and laziness.

I know Tom has said over and over that they judge based on each night's performance, not as an accumulation, but this seems so ridiculous to me. This season we have a person in the final 3 who has been at the losers' table in nearly every episode. So, each night, she hasn't been quite *the worst.* But how does this make a Top Chef? If she manages to cook better than the other two on this one particular night, she will be the Top Chef despite having served underseasoned canned beans and laksa that tasted of campfire. I'm not arguing that there's any particular conspiracy going on to push her through, though I think you could argue that the judges are all scared of her, but this rule just doesn't make much sense to me, because being a Top Chef is an accumulation.

I understand her point about it always being a woman doing all these things while the men and kids are just mannequins, but I think she's as wrong as the commercials about food and cooking and the part it plays in family life.

For one thing, the most glaring (to me), is that kids can eat pad thai. My kid does. We make pad thai at home and eat it. No big deal.

Second, I see a lot of feminist bloggers and so forth embracing the culture of non-cooking and takeout and ready-meals, and I think it's abominable. It's one thing to say that men should share the family chores--a fact most of us agree upon--and another to actually celebrate incompetence in the kitchen. Feeding yourself reasonably nutritious and economical meals is not something to be shunned. Being able and willing to cook for yourself is one of the most basic skills a person can have. The culture of not sitting down for family meals, of not cooking, of fast food and health-ruining packaged crap is bad, bad, very bad. And in that Haskins is propounding the exact same ideology as Hormel and Tyson.

Furthermore, I think she is as guilty as the big companies are in claiming that who you are as a woman is defined in relation to the kitchen and the family. She has no kids and orders pad thai, and that is meant to signal us that she is a certain type of woman--and definitely not one of those other women. It seems to me very much in keeping with the doctrine in some feminist factions that women cannot be real women if they choose to be stay-at-home moms who spend their days doing crafts and baking apple pies. I think Sarah Haskins would probably think me less of a woman because I make sure I cook decent meals for my family (my husband can cook and does when I can't, but usually it's me) almost every day of the week.

So, to me, they are equally bad. Hormel and Tyson are trying to sell me one thing; Sarah Haskins is trying to sell me a different thing. I don't want either of them, because the culture of canned food and takeaways is something I reject.