To be worried dd being vegan is an excuse not to eat?

[Donthugmeimscared]

Just that really 13yr old announced a couple of weeks ago that she is now vegan. Fair enough except she doesn't like anything, ate hardly anything before hand and now only wants to eat bare minimum like crisps or cereal with soy milk. I also have the problem that I am on a very tight budget of £40 a week for 4 of us so can't get her loads of different food. I'm trying to support her but it's really not going well.

I'd be laying down some ground rules, being vegan is an absolutely acceptable life choice when you are financing it yourself.

Crisps and cereal are not acceptable alternatives to actual food.

Did you have any other indications she might want to restrict food before this? Veganism is absolutely a fine way to be and you can get everything you need, but a well planned and varied diet is a necessity. One of the biggest reasons people go back from veganism is they don’t eat properly, get ill, and blame veganism rather than their poor diet. Eating vegan can also be super cheap, but again needs planning.

How does she respond to you saying she needs to eat more? Show her the vegan food pyramid and say this is what she needs to eat to be healthy and gain your buy in for veganism

I'm a vegan. The first few months I did lose weight but I soon discovered the joy of Oreos and peanut butter and gained it again. After a few fun weeks for my friends eating like I was living in a 70's commune a typical day now looks like:
Toast or crumpet with margerine/pb/jam
Hummus sarnie or soup/leftover pasta
Something like a dhall/3 bean chilli/spicy pasta for dinner. I suppose I do tend to add bread to my main meals.

I do buy cheese substitutes for a treat, and oat milk is £1 a litre in Tesco atm.

yANBU. I knew several friend who used going veggie/ vegan as a cover for eating disorders.

She needs to research it if she insists. My dd was vegan for a while ate a lot of pasta , lentils , veg and bread she also loves crisps . After about 18 months is now vegetarian ( I think it was cheese she missed and chocolate) my dd finances a lot herself she's 19 has a part time job I just got the staples that we all use like pasta , potatoes, fruit and veg .
I think after a while your dd will miss other food and possibly change her mind but if not respect her decision.

Yes it can be an excuse to have an eating disorder which is why I'm against such diets for teenagers on their own.

Though when a friend of mine went vegetarian as a teenager years ago, her parents made the whole family go vegetarian. While the parents are still veggie decades later the children aren't.

@Pogmella

Oreos are not vegan.

www.oreo.co.uk/faq

Had some delicious Vegan Magnum ice cream last night.

I certainly haven't lost weight as a vegetarian or a vegan. If she wants to just eat junk food, it won't matter whether she's a meat eater or a vegan. Just try and persuade her to eat a healthy balanced diet. That can be with or without meat and dairy.

Regular Oreos don't contain milk, they are just made in factories where there are milk products. The Oreo manufactures are just covering themselves for people with allergies.

It can be a cover for an eating disorder. I’d keep a close eye on her.

I put weight on when I went vegan.

Aqua risk of cross contamination is not something many vegans worry about. It is more of an an allergy warning when things are prepped in a factory also dealing in milk products.

Donthug I have been vegan about 2 months and haven’t lost weight! You need to work out with your DD what she will eat and go from there. Lots of goodness in the plant milk but she needs lots of fruit and veg, nuts and pulses etc. It can be cheaper to eat vegan if you cook from scratch. Curry, pasta, chilli, jacket spuds, soup all things you could all enjoy done vegan.

I'd urge caution. Although there are some larger vegans, I personally know 2 who use it as an excuse not to eat full meals or just get by on the bare minimum. It's a great excuse not to eat with people, which can be a worrying sign. I also suspect at least one of my friends pretends that they have already eaten when we get together (despite her fridge being empty). She is, from what I can tell, using her old food obsessions on this new "lifestyle choice". She had a severe eating disorder in her past and has lost 2.5 stone since she became vegan appx 8 months ago. She was only a size 8/10 then...she looks quite skeletal now and not at all healthy. I've confronted her about it, which didn't work, so now I'm just treading softly until she is ready to do something about it.

My 15 year old became vegan so I looked at the diet and was convinced it was good. 28 years later I'm still vegan and he has reverted to eating meat. It can be healthy and is not expensive.

My dd with high functioning autism became vegan as a way of exercising control over what she would eat

She didn't lose weight has actually lost weight now she's not a vegan but had an incredibly restrictive and repetitive diet based almost entirely on plain pasta

It's definitely something to be aware of

Restricting food groups is classic behaviour to cover eating disorders, if she wants to be vegan it should be on the proviso of a proper diet with proper food. Crisps and cereal are snacks not meals and a teenager needs a lot of calories to be active and develop. She still has growing to do and needs proper nutrition.

Be really careful OP. There is lots of evidence to suggest that many people with (or at risk of developing) eating disorders as a way to control their eating in an 'acceptable' way. I have seen this happen in one of DD18s friends and she has developed orthorexia as well as anorexia.

I would try and do healthy vegan meals for the whole family tbh. They can be very cheap, for example lentil shepherds pie etc. Then hopefully DD will see - if she is going vegan to limit her food intake - that eating less won't be an option.

If you are at all worried she isn't eating a lot, take her to the GP. The earlier someone with an eating disorder gets treatment, the less entrenched the restrictive behaviour become and the better the outcome.

She should be consuming around 2000 calories a day btw OP - just to maintain her weight.

Vegan can be a very cheap very healthy diet, but as with meat or vegetarian diet you have to eat a variety of things. If your daughter is living on crisps and cereal that is not healthy amd she needs to find other things to eat.

Is it just food she is 'vegan' with? Has she stopped wearing leather? Ensured her make up etc is vegan? Has she done her research on vegan products and is able to rationalise her decision? If she can argue her case then get a vegan cook book and insist that it's healthy vegan food, pulses and all, or nothing. Pulses etc are cheap, but at 13 I'd be insisting she takes a lot of responsibility for her different diet and be involved in the planning and cooking.

Crisps and cereal are not part of any healthy diet and are bloody expensive so I'd cut them right out of your weekly shop.

If she wants to a healthy vegan and takes responsibility for it then encourage her, but if she's making a lazy token effort then you shouldn't be doing all the work and paying extra for it!

My bet is she won't be willing to give up the non-food items so it's a diet rather than a vegan lifestyle she's in to.

@Aquamarine i'm curious, do you eat a vegan diet yourself or just police other people's for kicks...?

I have nothing against a vegan diet, but my DD going vegan at age 13 was to a large extent a feature of an eating disorder and not simply an ethical eating choice.

She went back to being vegetarian once her mental health improved.

Is your DD a healthy weight and had she lost weight recently?

She won't eat pulses and lentils she likes veg like carrots, sweetcorn , broccoli and that's it. When I try to make her anything she just eats the veg and leaves it. We don't eat much meat as a family as it's expensive. She also won't eat sauces that have lumps etc. She won't talk to me about food and it's really difficult. All I ever get is "I'm not hungry" or I ate earlier. She will go without lunch at school and is just grumpy. The crisps become a thing every few days when she decides she's "starving" has one pack and then nothing. I just don't know how to handle it. She's so head strong and its frustrating.

I’m a vegan, and I’ve had eating disorders that predated the veganism. My diet actually improved when I went vegan as I had to make stuff from scratch because there were very few ready made vegan products 22 years ago.

If your daughter was mine I’d put down some ground rules- you can go vegan/mainly vegan if you eat proper food. Not cereal and crisps. She’d need to do her research- the vegan society have lots of diet information and also sell a very economical multivitamin. I’d be insisting she ate daily from the listed food groups, otherwise it would be off to the GP to discuss her food restriction.

It’s actually pretty easy to eat vegan cheaply- pasta and pulses, rice and veg/tofu/a few nuts. You can get soya milk from Aldi. Yoghurts etc are a bit more pricey, but soya ones are the cheapest and most nutritious. Making your own cereal bars/cake is pretty economical.

Could you do a Thai curry? At least the veg is soaked in fatty milk if she does pick it out and leave the sauce. Or you can puree lentils and use tofu as a paneer substitute for a smooth masala style sauce. Perhaps ask her to plan a meal/cook for your family one night at the weekend?