Teenage Vegetarians

Teenagers are very suggestible and tend to be more left-wing than their parents, because they are under the sway of their teachers, who tend to be more left-wing as well. This tends to make teenagers more in touch with environmental issues and other world problems. This can send teenagers off in numerous directions, and one of the most well-liked, especially among teenage girls, is vegetarianism.

This phase often passes for one reason or another. Sometimes the parents cannot be bothered to cater to their new diet and sometimes the teenager just misses bacon sandwiches as well much to sustain the diet. However, many do stick to their principles or come back to them later on in life.

Their children going vegetarian is frequently a cause for concern for parents, but it should not be. If your teenagers take up vegetarianism you will almost certainly be anxiuos that they get enough protein, yet that can be taken care of. Instead, be thankful that they will be missing out on all the rubbish food that most teenagers eat in these, their most formative years.

If your teenager wants to become a vegetarian, you should encourage it, even though it will cost you more time especially if you do not know much about vegetarianism yourself. It will be a steep learning curve for you and your children in the starting.

One of the first things that a parent has to assess is to what level does their child want to go. Does he or she just want to give up meat or also give up fish or go the whole hog (!) and give up milk, dairy and eggs as well. These three levels make vegetarianism progressively more difficult.

One of the main concerns about going vegetarian (particularly for growing teenagers) is vitamin deficiency. Meat is concentrated vegetable food and is our main source of vitamins such as calcium, vitamin B12 and iron.

You cannot live without these vitamins and several others besides, so if you abandon meat, you will have to take them in tablet form until you find or take up a way of re-introducing them into your diet in food form.

There will be many new foods for your teenager to taste in their quest to replace meat and some of these alternatives may be unpalatable, depending on your child's outlook on trying new foods.

Tofu is one. Some people love it and some people hate it, but it is a very convenient alternative to meat. There are others, but it could be a long process of trial and error and your teen might simply quit.

If your teenager wants to give up, it is probably a good idea to make it simple for them to do so without them losing face or feeling that they have failed. It is difficult to undertake lifestyle alterations even at that relatively young age and who knows, perhaps they will return to (a degree of) vegetarianism after they leave home and start cooking for themselves.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, and is now involved with low fat low cholesterol diets. If you want to know more, please visit our website at http://vegetariancasserolerecipes.com