to worry about my teenage daughter going vegan?

[Meechimoo]

She's 14.
She decided to go veggie about a month ago.
She now wants to cut out all animal products and be vegan.
I've had long long conversations about this with her and told her that I'm very concerned about it. I'm worried she'll end up with poor nutrition and get rickets or something. I'm worried she won't get enough calories from a vegan diet.
But she's 14, almost 15, and hellbent on being vegan. The way I look at it, I can't force feed her dairy, can I?

My husband, her Dad, is dead against it because he thinks this is a control thing and we shouldn't allow her to dictate this sort of thing. And he's worried at additional cost to our food bill if we have to get her supplements, soya milk, vegan cheese etc.
Are there any vegan mumsnetters with vegan teens out there? How do you do it? Is it ok? Are they healthy and enough energy? Should I just go with it and support her or put our feet down and say she can remain veggie but we're not supporting her going vegan??

'why limit one's concern to food. Cheap clothing and electronic products - ipads, phones etc - will be produced in highly exploitative conditions'

?
because it doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Any concern for sustainability and ethical living is a move in the right direction and I think should be encouraged and supported ?

Please let's not be too hard on the dad. He has every right to be concerned about budget and what impact this change might have on the family. He's also correct to ask how this might affect his dsughter's health AND to question whether this is a control issue (especially if she has form, though that hasn't been suggested).

As many have stated, going vegan is a big change that requires thought and effort, certainly in the early stages. I'm sure some of the sensible information provided here might help adjust his opinion, but on first hearing this declaration (from a 14-year-old, no less) my first instinct would be to balk (a bit) as well.

It's all about communication and information and what works best for the whole family.

At age 30 I have only just started to consider the ethics of all my purchases and decisions and it turns out that SO MUCH of our normal consumption in the west is unethical and cruel IMO.

I think it's unfair to expect OPs daughter to want to take on (or even consider) the worlds suffering and problems. She wants to cut out animal products, that's plenty to be going on with. And she doesn't have to eat quinoa from Peru!

Suggestions like these seem to want to undermine her. Like when I was a veggie people (ie meat eaters) would try and criticise me for wearing leather. Why try and put people off, a little by little approach is fine and more than they were doing.

Anyway sorry for further derailing the thread. This thread should be about supporting OP and her daughter.

In the spirit of that here's my sample menu:
Bfast: cereal with alpro almond milk/aldi soy milk, jus rol bake it fresh pain au chocolate (best vegan find ever!), alpro yoghurt, toast with vitalite, fruit etc.
Lunch: bagel/sarnie with avocado or humous with salad, or left overs, or soup
Dinner:Linda mccartney pies and mash and veg/veg curry or pasta with tomato sauce and chickpeas, kidney beans and vegan mince and vegetables mixed in (very easy one pot meal)
Desert: banana bread or any normal cake recipe cooked with vitalite marg and egg replacer...or Swedish glacé icecream :)

""So I'd want to get an idealistic teenager to consider how far they were willing to go if they reallywanted to live more simply/less harmfully.""

Being Vegan is a really good starting point because the food/dairy industry has the biggest influence on World poverty/exploitation.

The research into following a Vegan diet, healthily will naturally lead to finding out what other changes can be made.

I think it's an excellent way that Teens can understanding the setting of personal Ethics and Boundaries etc and how these will have a "Cause and Effect" on even global matters.

Even if it isn't a lasting change, she will learn a lot about how the World works and how poverty etc is caused.

X post (again) with Hubb.

Well, it's also about who is doing the cooking and the shopping.

Teenagers can be incredibly sensitive to the suffering of dairy cows, but opt to be insensitive to the fact that their needs are making eating a family together a lot more complicated. It may be that there's an adolescent thing of wanting to state their independence, while wishing to depend on others for the increased work of preparing different/separate food. If one member of the family is a conventional carnivore, it can be a way of stating, 'I am a much better person than you are and your choices are wrong, and I wish to demonstrate this with every mouthful on every occasion when we sit down together at a table.'

This isn't an argument against a vegetarian or vegan diet. (There are lots of positive reasons why people may wish not to eat animal products.) But I think it is worth looking at the full range of causes - and likely effects of somebody wanting to make a dietary change now, rather than in a few years time when it impacts less on family members.

Nothing wrong with being vegan. However, will she prepare her own meals?

I changed to a vegan diet from vegetarian a few years ago (initially prompted for health reasons, though I always thought it would be preferable to going veggie but never felt confident enough to do it til I found information by doctors on the internet). I found the change much easier than I thought it would be. I already knew how to cook a lot of vegan dishes though so that helped.

The main potential deficiency problem is with the B12. Though I was low in this when I ate meat and dairy so some people probably have absorption issues.

These websites have nice recipes

www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/recipes/mcdougall-newsletter-recipes/

Though I use about a third to half of the chili they use in spicy dishes, and I like spicy but found they were a little too hot for me. The health information on that website is more geared towards adults, and they usually advocate a lower-fat diet for adults than children (e.g. they mention children can normally ear more nuts/seeds/avocados than what they advocate for adults, unless the children are overweight). Just mentioning this in case you look at the rest of the site.

This website is also very good, though I have only made some of the desserts off it so far blog.fatfreevegan.com/recipe-index

This writer is supposed to be good as well but I haven't done any of the recipes from her site or books yet happyherbivore.com/

The diet should overall be a bit cheaper than meat eating one, but some of the processed products would be more expensive. There can be a bit of an outlay initially for herbs and spices.

I think it will probably be a bit of trial and error initially, and maybe some back and forth on the diet, but she doesn't have to be perfect.

Forgot to say I second checking out Asian shops for some products as big packets of lentils and beans can work out a lot cheaper there, though maybe get the smaller packets first in case she doesn't like any particular ones? I like the idea someone suggested about a budget as this will prepare her for her adult life as well.

About air miles and ethics. About the air-miles issue, animal agriculture is apparently the single biggest contributor to global warming. Obviously people can make better or worse choices within any diet, but I think it is unfortunately not always obvious what they are. Apparently just because something is from further away doesn't necessarily make it worse than something closer, as it depends on how it was produced and transport methods. I must read up on this more myself. I wish they would bring in some sort of carbon/environmental footprint for all products, not just food. Ideally I would also love some sort of workers-rights rating as well but I don't think there is any hope of getting that!

She doesn't have to eat quinoa but I read up on this a bit out of curiosity and apparently the poor farmers have done well out of an increased interest in the grain, but on the negative side it increased prices in the cities. There was more to it than this (a shift to more meat in those areas was also a factor as far as I can remember). It is relatively expensive as a grain so I only eat it once in a blue moon and buy a fair trade one.

Agree with that Marianne - save the planet, never mind the home or the food budget!

Lowfatvegan - glad you posted that about the quinoa thanks! I had read somewhere that it wasn't all that simple but didn't really understand it :)

Make sure she takes vitamin & mineral supplements.

My dad is vegan and has been since his early 20s. At almost 60, he is probably healthier than me! Never had any health issues caused by his veganism, and actually felt better after cutting out animal produce.

I agree that this isn't something which should be 'controlled' or encouraged to stop. I admire your daughter for making this choice OP, at 14 she has looked into something and decided to take action.

Please don't take notice of people saying it's used as an excuse to look down on people and is an unnecessary strain on your household budget. I was brought up vegetarian, my family didn't have a lot of excess money, and we managed fine. After living with DP for so long (he loves meat and eats a lot, I don't eat that much) I see that eating meat costs a lot more than a vegetarian diet, at least (in my experience).
Growing up I also had to put up with "you think you're better than everyone else" comments, it wasn't nice.

Brilliant thread and very useful info.

My son has stopped eating meat and fish and now objects to wearing leather
(lies under bus crying like a baby for my mother emoticon)

I admire him very much. But it is hard to learn a new way of cooking, at least he still eats dairy products.... for now....

I tell him he mustn't evangelise his little sister and he mostly doesn't. I wish I had one diet for the whole family but I think I just need to learn to make such yummy vegetarian food that my dh doesn't look like I'm poisoning him when I fail to produce dead roasted animals for him!.

DH is veggie and recently I had a vegan friend stay for a month. During which time both he and she ate vegan (I didn't because I like my cheese too much and am not overwhelmed by vegan cheese.) I knew f'all about vegan cooking but actually it was fine - I pulled a lot of recipes from websites, this being one of the best (it's American but not too hard to work out what various ingredients/measures are) and ended up buying the cookbook.

I can't say I'd want to turn vegan, it was a good experiment for DH who intermittently toys with the idea, but he came to the conclusion that he missed cheese too It did introduce as to quinoa though! World food aisles in supermarkets are wonderful for large bags of pulses and lentils and cheaper than health food shop ones. If we lived in a more ethnically diverse area I'd buy them from ethnic food stores, but unfortunately that's not an option here. I'm not convinced that it's an expensive option. Tofu is cheaper than meat (about the same as Quorn which isn't vegan), seasonal veg, pulses/grains etc. Soy milk isn't all that dearer to dairy milk.

WRT vegan cosmetics etc, I understand that all Superdrug's own brand range (including their B cosmetics) are vegan society approved and don't break the bank!

Like PPs, I'd commend your daughter for trying to do something to make a difference. Whether it's a fad or not, personally I'd be supportive of it, as long as she's prepared to do some of the heavy lifting, WRT research and cooking herself as well.

Yes I definitely think veggie or vegan child in carnivore house should shift their ethically superior Asses right at the kitchen and pull their weight!

Oh and I also agree with a PP poster who mentioned non-evangelizing. DH and I had words, when we moved in together, about respecting the DDs choice to eat meat and basically not being a twat about his ethics or trying to influence others So now they sometimes eat meat (mainly not because I do use a lot of quorn for the sake of an easy life cooking things everyone will eat) and when I cook the DDs meat-based stuff he has something different and doesn't mention suffering animals!

Oreos are vegan.

I know veggie diets help prevent bowel cancer.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. I've been vegetarian since I was 16, and was dx with bowel cancer at 47.

Please encourage your daughter to take responsible decisions. But please also take care that she knows what to look out for if veganism isn't working for her. It doesn't work for everyone. She could find herself run down, miserable, depressed, and really missing out on life. Give her some easy outs if she needs to go back to veggie (including dairy or goat milk from cruelty free sources) or even eating the occasional bit of sustainable fish (I doubt she will). Reinforce that if everyone reduced reliance on animals it would help, it isn't just about one person cutting it out completely. Please please please look out for depression and lack of energy. Don't say no to veganism (you are right, this would be counter productive) but do keep a dialogue going that offers other perspectives that are less black and white.

Some vegans insist that it is perfectly healthy, for ever, for everyone. I assume that they themselves are very well, if they say so, but it really doesn't work for everyone.

IT will be sad for your dd if she is one of the people who cannot remain happy, healthy and functional on a vegan diet. Then she will be faced with the issue of how to balance her responsibility to herself with her responsibility to the world; remembering that she can take a more active role for good as a functional, healthy person.

Leave the door open for her to work out the best path for her and talk in ways that make it clear that you understand the subtlety of the issues.

I would try a gentle approach of accepting veggie diet but saying could we do half and half vegan. So 3 days per week try to accommodate her and the rest of the week, perhaps she could be just veggie. My younger brother decided to go vegan but has done it badly and ended up filling up on sugary stuff as he's missing so much from his ordinary diet. He is really quite fat and unhealthy as a result.

Thanks for your replies everyone.
I've learned a lot from this thread.
I can't at it from the assumption that veganism was faddy, expensive, possibly unhealthy, definitely tricky to cater for.
I've seen that not only are vegans probably a damn site healthier than me, but that vegan meal options are no more expensive and probably cheaper than carnivore options. And it's confirmed that at 14.5, she's old enough to not be dictated to.
But that she should get involved, research the nutrition, do some cooking, source the ingredients etc. I had a light bulb moment that she's a young woman, not a biddable toddler. And that she won't get rickets and waste away with a vegan diet. (she's not skinny to start with, a curvy 8)
I'll look at those blogs and books.and recipes.
This has taught me that there's a lot of ignorance about veganism. I was ignorant of the facts too. I'm glad I started the thread. i'll be returning to it frequently!

I have no metabolism so I low-carb and watch what I eat so I won't post my typical 'menu' .

Is this useful, OP?
www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?332-What-did-you-eat-today-(2-12)

Or this (mostly pictures but some recipes and illustrates that being vegan doesn't have to equal-restrictive!

www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?28463-Pictures-of-good-vegan-food-you-ve-eaten!-(2)

Also quorn isn't vegan but tesco and morrison's do some great vegan mince/chicken products if she'll go for that sort of thing.

Oh and get her to contact Teen Vegan. They sound like her kind of people. A google should bring them up.

I'm glad you found this so useful and you are doing a great job researching this for your daughter.