Vegetarian diet for toddler and baby?

[Wossname]

I think I would like my family to become vegetarian. We don't feat much meat anyway but all the recent news re horsemeat has made me feel very concerned about what I am giving my two year old and 10 month old. Could anyone advise me about what sort of foods would ensure that they get all of the nutrients etc that they need? We don't have lots of money but i will cook from scratch and spend time finding what they like.

If you're going to go vegetarian, especially when there are small children in the family, you need to get fully to grips with nutrition so that you can be sure you're covering all the bases and providing a balanced and varied diet. Iron and B vitamins tend to be the ones that are hardest to make up when you drop meat and fish from your diet. Foods like pulses, eggs, dark green vegetables, fortified breakfast cereals are all pretty cheap sources of iron, for example. The Vegetarian Society website is a good resource for nutritional information generally.

Also, with very small children, make sure you're not giving them too much fibre... veg, fruit, wholegrains etc... but that they are also getting plenty of calories from fat and protein. A very high-fibre diet which is OK for adults can not be so good for children because the fibre causes the food to whizz through the system too quickly for the nutrition to be absorbed efectively.

As a final word, the horsemeat scandal is a food fraud, of course. The vast majority of meat on the shelves - especially whole muscle meat - is not affected. Don't let it put you off meat completely.

Thanks for such an informative reply, Cogito, really appreciate it. I have no clue where to start and have realised today that I really need to make changes to my family's diet (other thread about children and weight- food for thought, so to speak)

I have been a vegetarian my whole life. I now have a 3 year old DD who is also vegetarian. We eat lots of different lentils and pulses and lots of veggies, including dark green leafy ones (though my DD hasn't hot to grips with cabbage yet). We also have a bread maker so make all our bread from scratch, I do a 50/50 wholemeal loaf mostly, so it's not too whole grain for my DD. We also eat lots of dairy, especially cheese!
Rose Elliot is my favourite vegetarian author, her meals aren't fancy and the ingredients are easy to get hold of. Her "bean book" is especially good. I HTH!!!

This Coventry Garden lentil and Lemon soup is so simple/quick/ nutritious and freezes beautifully!!! All the toddlers in my extended family love it including my DD! It is very inexpensive to make and I always double it!

This lentil spaghetti bake from Eighth Day Cafe is so tasty and yum!!! Again the sauce freezes like a dream and we always try and keep a stick of this in the freezer! Please try it, it is so tasty!

Stick= stock!!!

Lucy Burney's nutrition for babies and toddlers is a good start with lots of info about sources of nutrients. It's not vegetarian but has quite a few vegi recipes in it.