Teenage Vegetarians – Are They Doing The Right Thing?

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

This phase frequently passes for one reason or another. Occasionally the parents cannot be bothered to cater to their new diet and occasionally the teenager merely 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 anxiety for parents, yet it need not be. If your teenagers adopt vegetarianism you will probably become concerned that they get enough protein, but that can be taken care of. Instead, be grateful 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 judge is to what degree does their child want to go. Does he or she merely 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 foremost concerns about going vegetarian (particularly for developing teenagers) is vitamin deficiency. Meat is concentrated vegetable matter and is our main source of vitamins such as calcium, vitamin B12 and iron.

You cannot live without these vitamins and a number of others besides, so if you give up meat, you will have to take them in pill form until you find or take up a means of re-introducing them into your diet naturally.

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

Tofu is one. Some people love it and some people can’t stand it, but it is a very handy alternative to meat. There are others, but it could be a long process of trial and error and your teen might just stop.

If your teenager wants to quit, it is probably a good idea to make it easy for them to do so without them losing face or feeling that they have failed. It is difficult to undertake lifestyle changes even at that relatively young age and who knows, maybe they will return to (a level of) vegetarianism after they leave home and begin cooking for themselves.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently concerned with French dip sandwich recipes. If you want to know more or check out some special offers, please go to our website at Vegetarian Sandwich Recipes.