My daughter (aged 12) came home Friday and announced she was a vegetarian.

See my post at number seven, above. These kind of decisions have health repercussions...

...and the adults around the child can play an important part in making sure they stay healthy.

I've mentioned before that we are eating meatless meals 2 or 3 times a week now. It is healthy and easy on the budget. I try to stay with beans and whole grains.

My son is working on a long-term school project with another student who is a vegan. I made vegan cookies and vegan scones for her (and the rest of the group) to snack on, and she was blown away! No one had ever made homemade goodies for her before. How sad!

Michael

 
I t hink I can add a bit here. I did my "vegetarian stint" when I was around 14 and found I just

didn't like the taste of meat. So it wasn't an animal-rights issue, just a taste issue. It's also an age when you start to realize that you can take a measure of control over your life.

Both of my parents grew up during the Depression and while we weren't "poor," I'd have to say we weren't even on the upside of middle class. Having meat on the table EVERY NIGHT (except for Fridays when it was FISH) was a matter of honor to my mom, and indicated that her and my father were sufficiently providing for their large brood of children.

So when I declared that I wasn't going to eat meat anymore, my parents couldn't understand why. My mother would beg me just to have "just a small piece," which I couldn't get her to understand basically voided the whole point of being vegetarian.

Much older now, I can see that she was only concerned that her child was getting good food and she associated "meat" with "good food."

 
Thanks for all the concern, everyone. You all voiced the same things that the Hubs and I did on

Friday. The weekend consisted of multiple conversations with her about what "being vegetarian" would look like in order to be healthy. She seems very willing to try some new foods (tonight we're having stir-fry, and we bought her some teriyaki tofu for hers) as well as incorporate more legumes into her diet. She understands that we will not accept simply removing meat from her diet as a course of action, and that there will need to be deliberate additions.

She's 12. I don't know how long she'll want to stick with this, but for now we're not worrying about that. 2 of her best friends have been vegetarian for a few years now, and I'm sure that had something to do with her decision. (Although, one of them has terrible eating habits and we've made it clear to our daughter that eating chips and candy and cheese pizza is NOT an acceptable diet.) But for her, the clincher came Friday at school when the Health teacher brought in a cow's heart. I think that just shoved her over the edge. LOL.

It will be interesting, for sure. I'll get to cook some new stuff, though, and she loves to cook too so we should have some fun! Farro, anyone? smileys/smile.gif

Edited to add: I have been obese, and then morbidly obese, for nearly all my adult life. In October I finally had weight-loss surgery and have lost just over 100 pounds. I have to be extremely conscious of what I eat now and make sure I'm getting enough protein, so we're already getting used to that kind of thinking.

 
Egads, for 12 year olds? What was that teacher thinking? How about a plastic mock-up. That's enuff

to turn anyone vegetarian.

 
Cooking for athletes last summer, they required 150 grams of protein/day. I found a lot of sources

other than just meat. TVP - Textured Vegetable Protein was added to tons of stuff --rice, soups, etc. It has no flavor of its own but like tofu, it takes on the flavors of everything around it. You never even know it's there in the final dish.

Edamame is another excellent source. I added it to salads and anything that had peas or green beans (curries, etc.)

Barley, surprisingly, has a fair amount of protein. I used that almost exclusively instead of rice or other grains. Cook off a whole package and throw what you don't use in the freezer. It makes a lovely addition to soups, etc. I also like to stirfry it like rice.

 
Also note, there's something about the "perfect protein" that is uber important for vegetarians. I'd

recommend researching this. Apparently it's not enough to find the protein but absorbtion is aided by combining it with other things. If I'm remembering right, like rice & beans. There's something in both components that combined, make the perfect protein. (Don't quote me on this, I'm not exactly sure of the specifics...)

 
Just to add: as a non-veg, my favorite veg meal is grilled portobello mushrooms w/ sauteed spinach >

...served over kasha (boiled/baked buckwheat), topped with sour cream. This is incredibly easy to prepare, and you can douse the portobello mushrooms with soy sauce or teriyaki, too. It's a satisfying combo of grains and veg, and the dollop of sour cream makes it indulgent. smileys/smile.gif Kasha topped with tofu would probably be pretty good, too.

In any case, it's a relatively quick recipe that a 12-year-old could cook with some help--and it's always been a hit with non-vegetarians, too. Good luck! smileys/smile.gif

 
That does it. I'm getting this book as a wedding gift... two kids getting married and they listed

about 8 vegetarian books on their registry - didn't include this one, so it will be a nice surprise smileys/smile.gif
Thanks Mar & Traca!

 
Thanks Ang and Eva - I'm thinking of having meatless meals at least a

few days a week. We'll see how long this lasts!

 
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