11 year old newly veggie daughter......help required!

[shushpenfold]

Dear all

My lovely 11 year old, newly hormonal daughter has decided to become veggie. My DH and I are supporting her decision completely and just want to make sure that she has the correct balance of carbs/protein/fats/vits etc in her diet. We will try to eat veggie main meals as a family once a week (despite having a younger dd who is a fussy bugger and will hate it!) and have coped for the last 2 weeks with quorn alternatives etc. I do need to make sure that she is getting the right balance of foods though and I'm slightly concerned about iron/protein as she does lots of sport and is currently sprouting breasts and therefore could be close to periods. Does anyone already have veggie daughters and could advise as to some good books or such for us? Many thanks in advance x

Bumping...

bumping again...

I was veggi at that age, my mum just made me the same as everyone else but with the quorn substitute.

I grew ok.

Now I just eat super noodles because DS has turned against being vegetarian and I can't be arsed making me a quorn alternative

Shush, we have 'proteine days'
Monday is eggs.
Wednesday is pulses.
Friday is quorn.

Free to use any recipe. Eggs I make omlette, I grate cheese in, I make fresh bread with lots of seeds. For example. Or boiled, or in salade nicoise, or scrambled....

Pulses I either make curry, chilly beans on rice, fajitas with refried beans etc.

Quorn: escalopes, the chicken like bits in a stirfry, burgers etc.

Vegetables in everything. Apart from mushrooms which makes her gag, I don't care she doesn't like tomatoes, they're there, sliced in top of spinach in filo pastry, or in the mussaka. Same with peppers, brocolli, sweetcorn, sorry, it's there, you eat it. What I am saying is I don't allow the 'no meat' to extend to 'no sweetcorn', she'd try it if I let her.
Yoghurts (plain) and fruit (mainly apples and bananas) for pudding.
Snacks: almonds, cashew nuts, dark chocolate.
She's allowed cake/biscuits if I/we made them, not from the shop.

Having said that, because she completed a challenge today, she was allowed to choose whatever for a snack. The chose 30p worth of dip dabs.

Been veggy myself since 17 so do have some personal experience!
B vitamins very important as a growing/menstruating teen, ferratin levels take years to be depleted, so she should be ok for a while yet if she has had a good diet up until now. Sources in food, all whole grains (wholemeal pasta & breads), eggs, plain chocolate, marmite!
It's not hard to eat well but it is easy to fall into habits of eating lots of cheese as your main source of protein, Quorn stuff is good but expensive, I rate the frankfurter and 'best of British sausages, but they do taste to my palate similar to real meat which she might not like. Check out the Vegetarian Societies web pages, they have good sound dietary advice for new veggies there.

Many thanks all for the advice, it's very much appreciated. Hurr1cane....I feel for you as super noodles would do my head in! Thanks KiaOra and shabby for the info....I like the idea of different nights for different types of veggie based protein and the rest of the family can/will have to join in too. Nuts as snacks is a good idea and will help the rest of the family too! xx