Meat and animal fat are of crucial importance to everyone's diet. It's not politically correct, and some people have moral reasons to be vegetarian or vegan, but humans are meant to eat meat. If we don't, we have health problems. These may be worth it to you, but consider what you may be doing to your kids.
If you must be vegan, consider vegetable food sources that will allow you to consume enough micro organisms to make up for not having meat. Naturally fermented, unpasterurized fruits and vegetables such as sauerkraut and sour porridge are a great source of "micro meat". Technically, you are eating an animal, but a single celled one that you'd probably eat anyway just from swallowing saliva. Instead of one big animal, you're eating millions of them at a time. If you eat fermented foods that have been pasterurized, you're still responsible for millions of their deaths.
That's right. Every time you soak and boil a pot of beans, you've destroyed millions if not billions of actual lives. For all that killing you may as well just have a burger.
You Need Animal Fat
Especially if you're of mostly African, Native American, or very north east Asian descent. You need the fat more than you need the actual meat, even though you do need the meat. Somehow, we're able to get enough protein from alternate sources in a pinch, but our satiety triggers and specific vitamin needs require animal fats. It doesn't take much. You don't need everything you eat to be swimming in a pool of butter. Just, when you have a steak, don't discard the fat. Don't have the butcher cut it off. Eat it along with the meat, and if you get one with a bone, try to eat the marrow too.
"Rabbit Famine"
Many of us have been told that we should avoid fatty meats and animal fat. This has put many Native Americans and Africans in a state of deprivation some folks call a "rabbit famine". It's when you're getting meat but not enough animal fat.
So if you like chicken, rabbit, or other meats relatively low in fat, at least don't take off the bit that is there. It's also nice to spike it with the fat of a larger, fattier animal.
