I think a friend gave my child gelatine in food

[yetanothernamechnager]

I am very upset with him mum thinks I am being unreasonable

i bet the kid is eating this stuff all the time.

Shellac I wouldn't notice, certainly not if it has a E no.

Cochineal and gelatine I would, begin family and a treat as fish eating vegi Jewish friend (progressive and pretty pragmatic)

The bug bear of her life being prawns (not kosher) throw in the sauce for salmon or trout.

I never knew what Shellac was and i've gone and bought a nail kit of it, i'm a rubbish vegan and animal rights advocate.

Well it depends what your child wants. Both my dc are vegetarian, dd wants to stick with that at the moment, not sure what decision ds will come to when he's a bit older. You are not being unreasonable to feel a bit annoyed, esp if thats a diet your child wants to follow. Although it would be wise to make sure friends were clear on what he can or cant eat. You would also not be unreasonable to feel pissed off at the ignorance and rudeness of a few people on this thread.

By 9, if a DC is on a restricted diet, then they KNOW what they can and can't have to eat. Which rather leads me to suspect that your DC may not be as on board with veganism as you think, OP.

I know that my DS1 who is coeliac knew what he could and couldn't eat by 7yo, and he was only on a GF diet at 6yo.

My 18mo toddler has a serious allergy to dairy, and will shake his head for no when he is offered cheese.

By 9yo, your DC will KNOW that jelly and certain sweets contain gelatine, and is more than able to ask to see packaging and check the ingredients.

So to me, in my mind, your DC WANTED to eat this, as they are more than old enough to look after their own dietary restrictions. My guess is that you need to sit down, and be prepared for your DC to tell you that they don't want to be vegan, or even vegetarian. Unfortunately, there comes a point when we have to accept that our DC's ethics and views on everything in life may differ from our own. Your DC may be reaching this point a little earlier than you thought they would.

I also think that if your DC DOES want to continue following a vegan diet, then it is time to teach them to have more personal responsibility for controlling what they do and don't eat.

Teach them what to look for on food labels, what foods WILL contain things they don't want to eat, teach them to ask first if they can read the labels and eat after, teach them how to politely decline something they can't eat. Basically start equipping them for Secondary school, because it won't be done for them then, even if they have life-threatening allergies, and even less so for religious or ethical choice.

My Muslim DH has been caught out by pork gelatine in yogurts before now as well as sweets. If you don't know to watch out for it then it won't occur to you that there are animal products in something like sweets and that some yogurts are not suitable for vegetarians.

DD is 13. She has special medical dietary requirements. At 9 she new exactly what she was and wasn't allowed to eat.
It may be a fairly unknown fact that things like Haribo contain gelatine to a non vegan, but to someone who chooses this diet, I'd imagine it's a fairly obvious thing to look out for. I think that the time may be drawing near when you need to consider that your child might not want to follow a vegan diet.
Also, frankly, I think that you are BU to expect to be catered for. You want to ensure that he doesn't get meat or meat products, send food out with him.

If your child has dietary restrictions, you need to either accompany them everywhere, make sure an informed carer accompany them or that the child is able to make choices. Or just chill out.

Being a meat eater isnt a choice in the same way as being vegan is. My children have nothing excluded from their diets, so they might eat something that I personally wouldn't - maybe fried crickets. It would be a choice on my part to not let them have fried crickets, and I would have to make sure that anybody who might give them fried crickets knew not to. But as fried crickets are not generally given to kids, I wouldn't have much to worry about. Sweets are generally given to kids.

FGS, what does he do when he is playing out and a friend offers him a sweet? 9yo is old enough to be able to know what he can and cant eat, presuming no special needs. My street is full of 5yo kids playing, and of course if one of them has sweets they share it with their friends - does your son know to say no to that?

If your friend knowingly gave a meat product to your child and disguised it as vegan yummy food then YANBU.

If your friend made a mistake YABU

If your friend made a mistake, your child knew it was not vegan and ate it then you need to tallk to your child.

Mistakes do happen, a Malasian friend bought shandy - she didn't know what it was, it was on the same shelf as coke.

Things defo need to be labelled more efficiently.

I'd also like food packaging companies to tell me when a food is Halal, as I don't want to eat Halal.

YABU if you are forcing a 9yo to be vegan. Fine to enforce it in your kitchen and when you are buying the food, but not fair to expect the child to comply with your demands when they are a guest of others.

An allergy is completely different to a lifestyle choice.

I agree that 9 is old enough to police their own diet and make their own decisions.

My (hindu) dts scrutinise packets before taking anything, they are 7, and it was easy enough for them to pick up the habit from me without really having to sit down and educate them. At 7, they are still young enough to not really question whether they want to follow the choice not to eat beef.

For my older two (10, 12), they have a bit more of a choice, because of their age, and because their cultural background is different. They have been told it is their choice to make, we just won't accept it in the house. If they want to eat it when outside it's not my right to dictate that they can't. I think ds1 in particular wants to eat it because his best friend is a beef fiend and has eaten it at school before. It was his choice.

What about kosher, ghostship?

The animosity towards veggie parents raising veggie kids is so weird. Its almost like people want the dcs to rebel and fill their faces at greggs.

Ghostship if food were labelled halal everything vegetarian and vegan would carry the label too. Unless you mean meat in which case meat products that are halal already carry the halal label.

I think you are fairly safe with the shellac nail polish...no beetles involved there!

and at nine, surely the child is old enough to know better if at all interested in their diet.

It's not so much wanting them to rebel, but wanting them to have the freedom to make their own choices imo.

I want my kids to make up their own minds about religion and diet, I just try to teach them enough to make their own decisions.

GnocchiNineDoors "we" are vegan - tell me OP, did your dc take the decision.of veganism on themselves or did you make that decision for them?

Do you not make decisions for your children? What religion they will follow, what morals to try to teach them? Or do you teach them nothing at all and let them make up their own mind once they are grown ups?

GnocchiNineDoors I think I see it similar to a religion - you inform and expose your dc to a range of them and allow them to maoe the decision as amd when they are ready.

Wow so your children follow Catholicism, Christianity, Islam, Buddism . . . Etc etc etc etc, ALL AT THE SAME TIME! How do they fit it all in?

I don't think its annimosity about raising children as vegetarian, it is the idea of forcing a child to be vegetarian that doesn't sit right with me. Being vegetarian is a personal choice and I think sometimes parents forget that, if a child wants to eat haribo or a hot dog when with friends then that is their choice.

I wouldn't expect parents to cook meat or whatever else for their child but I would expect them to give them some freedom of choice and not automatically expect they will want to follow them.

By the age of 9 the OPs son is more than old enough to decide for himself what he wants to eat and what he doesn't

This is just one of those things that will inevitably happen when a child is on a strict diet. Even children with severe allergies will get caught out now and again. My DP and my oldest friend have peanut allergies and both have slipped up, even though they know what they are looking out for.

Gelatine is an easy mistake to make.

I am vegetarian because I never liked eating meat - the taste or the idea of it - and it has been about 25 years since I ate any deliberately. I have been given it by mistake a couple of times and have been very sick. Both times it was when eating out and I have been spitting teeth because it was an entirely avoidable mistake.

I have also been given things containing meat stock/fat etc by mistake and while I don't like the taste, it doesn't make me sick so I shrug and get over it.

It's a bit different for me because I'm not fussed about meat by-products, only meat itself, so there is no ethical issue, but I think you have to accept that mistakes will happen and teach your child to be alert.

[waits for someone to come and say "You can't call yourself a vegetarian if you eat by-products. Gets in first with announcement of intention to continue to say "I'm a vegetarian" as opposed to "I don't eat meat, fish, food cooked in meat oils/stocks, but I'm fine with rennet and gelatine]

I have a muslim colleague whose daughter gets given non-acceptable food now and again and they just say "oh well" and move on. They recently found out that coke or pepsi (can't remember which) contains alcohol traces and it was put on the list of "banned" foods - all that happened is that everyone stopped drinking it. There was no anger or hysteria.

oh, I thought everyone knew this.

I know not to give veggie friends haribo or jelly or even marshmallows.

maybe carefully mention it next time?

being vegan must be tough!