To say she can’t become a vegan yet

[funnyfairy360]

So my 10yr old DD has announced that she does not believe it is Ok to use animal products any more and from now on will not be eating/wearing/using anything made from animals or produced by animals. She does not even want to be ‘forced’ to sit on our leather couch. Now don’t get me wrong I’m all for her finding her own way in life but this is not just becoming vegetarian or going goth, becoming vegan is life changing and to be honest too inconvenient and expensive for me to make happen for her right now. She said she has the right to choose I say yes when she can pay for the products and cook the food herself .....she wants vegan friendly washing up liquid/shampoo/ soap/ clothes/this list could go on and on. None of the rest of us have any desire to go vegan.

Yabu. Support her. She will remember if you don’t and think of the message it sends about making ethical choices. It doesn’t need to be expensive can be cheap and healthy- have a look in the vegan forum for ideas.

You’ve raised a compassionate daughter, that’s a great thing, don’t try to quash it!

if the kid means it, she takes the extra work.

You see this is your problem. You work from the base that eating meat is "normal" and anything that involves questioning or critical thinking is a pain in the ass. Ultimately it boils down to whether you want to raise drones or intelligent, free thinking people.

Superdrug and coop for hygeine and cleaning products that are cheap and marked as vegan or free of animal products and are not tested on animals.

@KimCheesePickle most white and brown pasta is vegan? And just put a bit of pasta aside and put a shop bought pasta sauce on it, easy job done.

Hi back work having bought some Superdrug toiletries but you can all hate me I am not doing the vegan food thing call me a bad mum and I am sure plenty of you will but she can stay veggie have her animal friendly shampoo etc but that’s as far as I am going, if she is still vegitarian by new year and still wants to be vegan I will consider giving her some of the family allowance and a cook book she will just have to learn to cook for herself DS and DH not interest in eating vegan and to be honest me neither

Maybe OP, who posted yesterday evening, is really so busy she actually hasn't had time to read/reply yet. (And if that is the case, she may genuinely not have time to research, whereas some people would simply by substituting a few hours of personal internet use.)

OP I really think you are making this a huge drama when it isn't.

Pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce is vegan. Mushroom risotto can be vegan. There are loads of things you could cook for everyone and just not give her the meat or give her a meat substitute such as vegan sausages or fish fingers etc etc.

What will you do if she refuses to eat?

kikisparks - that bit bemused me as I know all pasta is vegan, bar the fresh stuff made with egg, but I was just responding to the previous poster who mentioned two different pans of pasta for the vegans & nonvegans.

However, pasta with a bit of sauce is not a healthy meal. It might be ok a couple of times at the end of the month, or the odd time when you come in late for supper from activities in the evening. It's empty calories devoid of any nutritional benefit besides filling you up. Minimal protein, vitamins, minerals, essential fats etc.

Pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce is vegan. Mushroom risotto can be vegan. There are loads of things you could cook for everyone and just not give her the meat or give her a meat substitute such as vegan sausages or fish fingers etc etc.

Occasionally this is fine, but nutritionally complete diet it isn't. To be nutritionally complete and vegan takes planning. It's not as simple as subbing meat for beans or bolognese sauce for a vegan sauce. Yes, it's possible to survive offpasta, chips and a few veg, but it isn't healthy. An adult can choose not to do the planning and research but a child needs the right nutrients to grow and thrive. It's totally possible to be vegan and very healthy but it isn't easy, particularly to start with.

A risotto without chicken stock butter and cheese is not a risotto.... It is a rice and veg dish.

I became vegetarian at 11 and was for 10 years have been pescatarian for the last 11 years.
Although she has done it for a month that's outwith school holidays being at friends houses etc. Why not compromise with if she can be vegetarian for a year then you will allow it. That will test her through bbq, holidays a Christmas.
She does have to be careful to ensure that she gets everything she needs without vitamin supplements. I would say its actually a lot cheaper to be vegetarian/vegan, Indian shops sell massive bags of red and green lentils for very little. Almond milk is about £1.50ish so not too much veg is reasonable. Alpro yogurt is about the same price.
The cooking side is pretty easy I usually make a veggie base then if cooking for meat eaters cook it off and add it once I've taken a portion.

@ChelleDawg2020

If she wants to become vegan then insist she goes the whole hog, so to speak. That means:
- no bread (contains insect fragments)
- no car journeys (tyres contain animal byproducts)
- no bus journeys, or owning a bicycle for the same reason
- any five or ten pound notes in her possession must be given to you (contains animal byproducts)
Almost everything contains or has used animal matter in its production or transport. Technically a vegan should not buy anything that has been transported by lorry, for example, because of the tyre issue.
Unless she only wants to be a "vegan" when it's convenient for her?

Do you honestly believe this? Really? When you sit back and think about it, do you genuinely think it is a valid argument, or did you just say it for effect?

Why should we as humans have to be either impossibly perfect, or utterly destructive? By that logic, there's no point sitting an exam you might not get full marks on, no point getting a job unless it pays a seven figure salary, no point buying a car unless it's the fastest F1 car, no point living unless you're guaranteed to live to 100...

How far do you extend that ludicrous (lack of) logic?

Any improvement is better than none. There is no dispute amongst scientists that veganism is hugely better for the environment. It's just a fact you can't argue with. Whether you believe that societal norms and values trump that is up to you (and I mean that genuinely), and that is something you can argue if you so wish, but please rethink your assertion that vegans are the ones who have to be utterly perfect in every way, or not try at all.

Why not compromise with if she can be vegetarian for a year then you will allow it. That will test her through bbq, holidays a Christmas.

If the family is genuinely that strapped for time then this makes a lot of sense. Maybe for a bit longer until she gets to an age where they are comfortable with her organising and cooking full meals for herself. (If she can already, then great. I think everyone was expected to use ovens and sharp knives and follow recipes in Home Ec when we were 12, regardless of how sheltered they had been before.)

I was raised veggie since age 3 and been vegan 8 years. If you want any tips PM me OP.

@KimCheesePickle wheat is actually relatively high protein and contains some minerals and if it’s a roast vegetable sauce it will be rich in vitamins, not empty calories. And actually if you add red meat mince that’s carcinogenic so not ideal. If you want to add protein vegan mince is cheaper and similar protein and if made from soya will have vitamins and minerals as well.

@ChelleDog2020 are you aware what the definition of a vegan is? Doesn’t seem like it based on your list of what we apparently must do.

And you can check this for other ideas op www.mumsnet.com/Talk/vegan/3300520-DD-newly-vegan-how-to-satisfy-appetite

As said there things like baked potatoes and hummus and salad, beans on toast, pasta (perhaps spaghetti bolognese with soya mince), veggie curries with rice, veggie chilli with couscous, stir fries with peanut butter and soy sauce, porridge, whole meal peanut butter sandwiches, veggie sausages mash and veg, lentil soup with bread, in fact loads of soups (minestrone, butternut squash and coconut, falafel and hummus pitta, veggie fajitas, refried bean tacos, homemade vegetable tarts etc are all cheap and fairly simple.

kiki - wheat doesn't have the full range of essential amino acids... unless you know what you're doing and matching it with something complementary, you'll be missing out on making necessary proteins in the body. Vegan mince is basically soya-meal, full of phyto-estrogens that have hormone mimicking effects and can dangerously impact thyroid functioning and lead to auto-immune conditions like Hashimoto's.

And it's laughable to say that meat is carcinogenic (the unprocessed kind anyway). Being a regular omnivore generally correlates to eating high levels of processed food and sugar, which are high cancer risks. Strip that out and compare wholefood shop consumers, both veggie and omnivore, and you find cancer risks much more evened out. I'm an advocate of real food - meat, fish, vegetables, dairy, eggs, temperate fibrous fruit, nuts, olives etc and minimal to no grains, sugar and processed food which promote disease processes in the body.

coop and superdrug toiletries are vegan. Coop washing up liquid and detergents are.

Soya milk is the cheapest out of the plant milks and if you get it from a supermarket, you can even get value versions sometimes. Its also available in aldi and lidl
Vitalite margerine is vegan and pretty cheap

Tbh I wouldnt mind the excuse to remember to get more ethical products, but I think youd be perfectly reasonable to get her to stick to her own food rather than expecting everyone else to change too

www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ from the world health orhanisation red meat is classified as 2 for cancer risk- probably causes cancer. Processed meat is 1- causes cancer.

The need to protein combine is a myth. From the academy of nutrition and diet is www.eatrightpro.org/~/media/eatrightpro%20files/practice/position%20and%20practice%20papers/position%20papers/vegetarian-diet.ashx

And the research is that phyto estrogens in soya foods is perfectly safe for human consumption and don’t act as estrogen in the body. From the Association of uk dieticians www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/soya_and_health.pdf

On the other hand dairy (a so called “real food”) has actual estrogen in it www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524299/

Ultimately it boils down to whether you want to raise drones or intelligent, free thinking people.

This. If it were my DD, I would be very proud and support her all the way.

And BTW, the assumption that eating meat is normal and anything else is not: dare I care to remind you that we are in fact frugivores, not omnivores, as evidenced by our teeth and our jaw mechanism.

Children should have bodily autonomy too. Just because they’re young doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to their own bodies and that includes choices about what to put in them. Obviously they can’t eat sweets all day or just get some expensive food item because they want it but in a broader sense if there are foods a child doesn’t want to eat for a valid reason (including eg they don’t like the taste) then they shouldn’t have to. If there are so many foods a child doesn’t like that it impacts on health a parent could help to mitigate that for example having the child take vitamins.

However just going vegan as long as she likes most foods isn’t actually restrictive, there are 10s of thousands of plant foods.

The four things to be mindful of:

1. B12- need to ensure she’s consuming enough via fortified foods or a supplement (meat is supplemented with this and she won’t be getting it from that. Most plant milks are fortified as are some mock meats and marmite).

2. D- sufficient sun exposure or enough fortified foods or supplement (dairy milk is fortified with this but so are plant milks).

3. Omegas- the best source is algae oil which is like taking fish oil but with less heavy metals- it’s where the fish get their omegas from. Alternatively lots of flax seeds and some rapeseed oil and not too many oils high in omega 6.

4. iodine- sea vegetables, iodised salt or supplement.

Calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium should all be fine as long as she eats lots of legumes and a variety of green leafy veg.

According to Britannica a frugivore is any animal that subsists totally or primarily on fruit. They also include a footnote - may also refer to the human lifestyle that endorses the exclusive consumption of fresh fruits and raw vegetables. Humans swing more to the carnivore side of omnivorous.

It's a bit ridiculous to say that all vegans are free thinking and intelligent and anyone who doesn't adopt this lifestyle is a drone. Many people adopt different diets at different times. Do you believe that the consumption of animal products destroys your personality somehow?

Disclaimer - I.haven't read the whole thread. My dd is older than yours (15) - am.quite impressed by your dd and her ethics at age 10 - anyways DD decided to become vegetarian a few months back. She floated the concept of veganism - I told her 'no' not on my watch. it's much harder (not impossible but harder) to achieve a nutritionally balanced diet as a vegan - and she can choose to put the work.in when she is older. I am not prepared to take it on. She seems okay with that