My 11 year old daughter has decided she wants to go vegetarian. (Lacto-ovo, is that the term? IAE she still likes milk and cheese.) Although the rest of us have a more conventional diet, it’s OK by me, actually good that she thinks about what she eats. But she’s kind of a picky eater. Any parents in my shoes? (Come on out of there!) What do your kids eat, and how do you make sure they’re not getting nutritionally shortchanged?
My kids are too little to go there yet, but my daughter did go through a stage where she simply didn’t care for meat, and she’s still not a big fan of most vegetables. I took advantage of the fact that she did like eggs, cheese, soups with beans, and whole grain cereals. I also look for juices and soymilk (which she likes) fortified with vitamins and calcium. She doesn’t like plain cooked vegetables, but she does like to nibble raw ones and will eat salads. I also try to choose or make pasta sauces that include some artfully concealed vegetables other than tomatoes. My kids also love fruit, so I splurge a bit and buy a good variety there.
Maybe you could also invest in a good veggie cookbook and work out what she likes together. The Moosewood books are fun.
I was a vegetarian child of omnivorous parents.
I magically became less picky when I finally went veg. My problem, it turns out, was that I didn’t like meat. So when all my family’s offerings were based on meat, I appeared to be a very very pciky eater.
Take her to a natural food store and let her go a little wild picking out yummy food. And try a couple veggie cook books (although I’m not a big fan of most of them). As long as she eats a reasonably varied diet, she won’t have any nutritional problems. Most Americans diet problems relate to having too much crap, not too little nutrients. It takes work to end up with defincientcies. If you are worried, make her do what my mom did. She made me do research and make a little presentation to her about how I was going to get nutrition before she let me be vegetarian in peace.
As to what I eat now…lots of beans and lentils. I cook up a batch of beans (quick and easy in the pressure cooker) at least twice a week, and usually do some variation of Mexican food with them. As a teenager, I ate bread, cheese and fruit for lunch at school.
Veggie with meat-eating parents here.
Never liked meat much; parents didn’t care. Told them I was giving up meat in 8th grade; they said as long as I took a multivitamin, it was fine with them. It is.
I’ve semi-recently gone somewhat vegan. There’s lots out there. Morningstar Farms has a ton of good stuff - veggie burgers, fake chicken, fake sausage, fake bacon, pot pies (which, I might add, are awesomly yummy), etc.
You’d be surprised at what’s out there. Not only are there tons and tons of meat substitutes (eg, SmartDogs, veggie burgers…), but there’s a lot to eat that’s not meat. Cheese is good, but you should watch the fat content on that. Fruit, vegetables (I eat salad every night), pasta, beans, different types of grains, and so on. The health-food store is a good idea, even to just see what’s out there.
Soy is good - it’s high in all sorts of good vitamins and protein. It’s important to substitute something in for the meat taken out of the diet. My school lunches are lots of sandwiches (I admittedly have a peanut butter fixation. PB, honey, and sliced banana on whole-grain bread makes for a great sandwich), pita bread w/ hummus or babaganoush (I know that’s not the right spelling) is another fave. Grapes are good. Celery with peanut butter.
One of my favorite meals: sautee some onion, peppers, yellow squash (if you like), garlic. Add a little cumin, chile powder, salt, other stuff works, too. Mix with some rice. Eat on a tortilla, if desired. Yummy!
As for the health stuff, if it’s a big concern, talk to the family doc about it.
Veggie with meat-eating parents here.
Never liked meat much; parents didn’t care. Told them I was giving up meat in 8th grade; they said as long as I took a multivitamin, it was fine with them. It is.
I’ve semi-recently gone somewhat vegan. There’s lots out there. Morningstar Farms has a ton of good stuff - veggie burgers, fake chicken, fake sausage, fake bacon, pot pies (which, I might add, are awesomly yummy), etc.
You’d be surprised at what’s out there. Not only are there tons and tons of meat substitutes (eg, SmartDogs, veggie burgers…), but there’s a lot to eat that’s not meat. Cheese is good, but you should watch the fat content on that. Fruit, vegetables (I eat salad every night), pasta, beans, different types of grains, and so on. The health-food store is a good idea, even to just see what’s out there.
Soy is good - it’s high in all sorts of good vitamins and protein. It’s important to substitute something in for the meat taken out of the diet. My school lunches are lots of sandwiches (I admittedly have a peanut butter fixation. PB, honey, and sliced banana on whole-grain bread makes for a great sandwich), pita bread w/ hummus or babaganoush (I know that’s not the right spelling) is another fave. Grapes are good. Celery with peanut butter.
One of my favorite meals: sautee some onion, peppers, yellow squash (if you like), garlic. Add a little cumin, chile powder, salt, other stuff works, too. Mix with some rice. Eat on a tortilla, if desired. Yummy!
As for the health stuff, if it’s a big concern, talk to the family doc about it.
What I’d like to see is omnivorous kids of veggie/vegan parents. Any instances of that?
Well, I remember my sister going vegetarian when she was 11-12ish. Probably just a phase, though if you want to joke around with her you can sneak some meat into those fake hamburgers like my parents used to do - very funny. My sister grew out of it though, after my Dad got a large pay increase, and we started eating steak more often.
Nothing wrong with going ovo-lacto vegetarian. I was (to all purposes) one for 17 years, and I grew up just fine.
But do be warned, seal cleaner, that if she’s a picky eater when it comes to vegetables, she might face problems. The idea with vegetarianism is that you must, must, must eat sensible portions of green veggies, soy, pulses, fruits, etc everyday in order to get the daily requirement of proteins and vitamins. If you manage this, you’ll be healthy as heck. If not, say hello to malnutrition.
She’s going to have to learn to eat everything.
I’ve heard the biggest problems for these kids is they tend to eat junk food instead of vegetables and all that other stuff.
She’s getting into fruit more, which is great. Loves french fries, bad, but we don’t make them at home and don’t go to the Golden Arches much.
Funny, I hated vegetables growing up, now really enjoy them.
PS - Here’s the kicker - my son is on Atkins. I joked we should cook as usual, then just divide up the plate for them. If it were only so easy…
Another veggie child of omnivorous parents signing in. I’ve found getting protein to be a lot easier now than when I started 8-9 years ago. I couldn’t cook and my parents had no idea how to prepare vegetarian meals, so I just ate a lot of green vegetables, potatoes and pasta. In addition, I had to take meds for ADD which reduced my appetite, which didn’t help much.
(Adult) veggie child of omni parents. The biggest problem I have when I go home for dinner is that they are still in the mindset that
Meal minus Meat = Vegetarian Meal, so I get a whole lotta salad and carbs and not much else. Sometimes they make it up with dairy but that’s not good for me either.
Protein is hard for them to get their head around: non-meat protein often means dairy for meat-eaters, but (a) lots of veggies don’t like to go overboard on dairy, for the same kinds of reasons they’re vegetarian, and (b) there’s lots of fat in it. (In my case, giving up meat meant my body no longer wanted dairy, for some reason I don’t understand.)
So serve lots of beans, and learn to cook with nuts/seeds (sesame seeds are very healthy). And don’t be afraid of tofu. Be cautious, but try cooking it in lots of different ways. A good sauce can work wonders !
Out of curiosity, how does cooking for a mixed family work? Cooking meat entrees doesn’t seem equitable for the veggies, but making veggie entrees doesn’t seem all that equitable for the carnivores, and making two entrees all the time seems like a ridiculous amount of work for whoever does the cooking. So what happens?
I know how my mother would have handled it; she would have figured that if I was old enough to decide I was going veggie, I was old enough to make my own supplements to the meals she cooked. Same thing if I’d decided I was doing the Atkins diet. I’m guessing a lot of parents aren’t like my mother, though.
[QUOTEAny omnivorous parents of vegetarian kids?[/QUOTE]
Homer Simpson?
D’oh!
Ummm, thats a problem for all kids. People are surprised that being vegetarian doesn’t automatically make you healthy. But it’s not like being vegetarian inspires people to eat more junk.
Once again, unless you eat the same thing every single day, a modern American vegetarian diet (not vegan, as they do have issues with B-12) contains next to no risk of malnutrition. Certainly no more risk than a modern American meat diet. It’s not like you have to think about every single thing you eat or else you’ll die. It’s the same as eating meat- try to eat a variety and try to stay away from heavily processed food. Vegetarianism does not require special vigilance. I don’t eat a lot of tofu, funny supplaments, unusual amounts of vegetables, meat substitutes or other “strange” foods. But I do eat a varied, healthy diet and I’m healthy. Just without the meat.
As a caveat, there are some people who truely do not take to the veg diet. Fully 1/2 of everyone I know (I live in a wierd hippy town) are veg, and I’ve never met one of these people, but I’ve heard stories and I don’t disbelieve them.
I live in a mixed household, and have been around a lot of mixed households. It really isn’t that big of a problem. Most world cusines take well to vegetarianism (Mexican, most varieties of Asian, Indian, Italian, most all soups) and it’s pretty easy to fry up some hamburger or whatever for the meat-eaters to add in. Likewise it’s easy to make a pot of beans or lentils (or open a can if thats too much work) for the vegetarian to eat on the side. In my household, the onmivore just buys fancy cold cuts and the occasional meat-based frozen meal, and restricts serious meat eating to when we go out.
Sorry if I sound a bit shrill. It’s just that becoming vegetarian was probably the easiest, simplist, least life-changeing decision I ever made. I never think about it- in my mind the meat aisle of the grocery store doesn’t exist. I’ve only been to one restraunt where I had trouble ordering, and I’m not even a big fan of salads or veggie-burgers (now Chick patties…those are good). I just can’t understand why so many meat eaters insist it’s a world shaking event.
Another great aspect. My father-in-law is a retired cattle rancher. We were there for dinner last weekend. He offered her, sequentially:
- Hot dogs
- Ham
- Chili
I guess, if it’s not an actual hunk of beef, it’s not really meat anyway…
Chick Patties? Is that the tasty snack that will land you in eternal hellfire!?!
Someone asked if there are ever omivorous children of vegetarian parents. I sort of fell into that category.
My father (who always did most of the cooking around my house) is a vegetarian, as is my older brother. Although they both eat seafood from time to time. My mom and I are omnivorous.
It’s really not that big a deal… sometime my mom would make something meaty to add in to the main dish (example: meatballs to pasta) but most of the time we just ate vegetarian happily, since my dad is an excellent cook.
Course when my dad went out of town – and particualrly after my brother left for college – Mom and I inevitably went out for some steaks. Mother-daughter carnivorous bonding. 
Actually. I’m very curious about how the family planning works. I grew up with my mom making either two kinds of meals
a) a square meal, with a meat, a salad, boiled vegeatables and a starch
b) a one pot meal, stew, or a casserole (lasagne, enchiladas etc.)
this is my cooking heritage, and additionally, I’ll admit to being very meat centric. While it’s true that I’ve been known to eat cheese & crackers for dinner, in the general instance, all of my meals have meat, even my salads tend to have meat in them.
Please help me. how do I cook a mixed meal for vegetarians & unrepentant carnivores without having to buy beans or tofu or Fake meat products ( the carnies won’t eat them) or starving the vegetarians.
Thank you thank you thank you.
White Ink, I don’t know too many carnivores who won’t eat beans in any form. Even tofu has pretty much ceased to be what you’d call exotic. It helps if you just think of them as food, rather than as a substitute for something else. Tofu hot dogs are pretty lame, but baked tofu with spicy peanut sauce is really good.
Anyway, there are lots of pasta dishes that can be made to be served with two sauce options. For example, someone already mentioned doing spaghetti with meatballs on the side, to be added if you wish. Another option would be a make-your-own taco thing with beans and meat served separately so that you could take either or both.
Another way to go would be to have a substantial vegetarian casserole and have the meat as a side dish. For example, serve vegetarian lasagne with grilled chicken breast on the side. Or macaroni and cheese with ham on the side, etc.