11 year old pescatarian wants to go vegan

[Chingchok]

Hi all

Having decided to stop eating meat at age 9, my son now wants to stop eating fish and dairy. He has never been able to eat eggs because of allergy, but now he has switched to oat or almond milk, and doesn’t want to eat fish anymore.

We support him, however I feel really torn and anxious about his nutrition. He already has an iron deficiency (he was always on the edge of it before stopping meat), vit D deficiency and he has suspected ADHD. I’ve tried vegan fish oils (Nothing Fishy) which are almost impossible to get him to take. He takes an iron supplement and vitamin D but I also worry about b12, EFAs…

A lot of vegan ready-made foods are relatively processed, and we are both allergic to several preservatives, so I make almost everything myself. Nut cheese, chickpea tofu, miso, a wide varieties of lentils, beans, nut butters and seed dips and oils. We almost completely stopped eating meat when he did, and so I already cooked 90 per cent vegetarian foods at home. When he has to eat out, ie on a school trip, fish has often been the only option available to him.

Oh and his school is nut-free. So no almond milk, cashew nut cheese.

I would really welcome concrete advice on how to make this switch, how to make sure he gets enough of specific nutrients, how not to spend my entire life in the kitchen…

Thank you in advance for sharing your experiences!

Christ some of the comments on here. My ds is 7 and veggie. My Neices have never touched meat, dairy or eggs in their lives. It is not an extreme diet at all.

You can get everything you need from a vegan diet. Maybe give a supplement for B12. But no one gets enough of that anyway.

@Oftenithinkaboutit

‘My boy, when you don’t need to take an iron supplement because your levels are so low, then we can talk about cutting out more food groups. Until then, dairy and fish are on the menu’

Leaving aside the Jacob Rhys-Mogg style of talking to your child which I doubt anyone else uses in the real world, being vegetarian or vegan doesn’t involve cutting out food groups.

You must be thinking of diets where people completely cut out carbohydrates such as Keto.

@Neurodiversitydoctor

Veganism is cheap, have you seen the price of meat ? Lentils and beans are pennies.

This! Vegan is waaay cheaper than meat and dairy as long as you're not buying all the substitutions there are out there.

@Chunkymenrock

No, no, no. He needs these things (fish etc) to provide optimum nutrition whilst he's growing. He can go vegan when he's 18 if he wants.

No, no, no. He doesn't. Ffs.

@Warmduscher

I always call my son “my boy”. Or “ginger nut” or “my love”
And my daughter “my girl” or “nugget” or “little one”

[quote Oftenithinkaboutit]@Warmduscher

I always call my son “my boy”. Or “ginger nut” or “my love”
And my daughter “my girl” or “nugget” or “little one”[/quote]
Fair play to you for admitting you live in the 1920s

@Warmduscher

What do you call your children?!

But I’m going to take a punt

You don’t have children, do you?

Because parents generally have silly names for their children!

[quote Oftenithinkaboutit]@Warmduscher

What do you call your children?![/quote]
They are young adults now, but when they were children I’d call them by their names.

I agree people often have silly names for their children. I wasn’t teasing you because your names are silly, but because they’re old-fashioned.

Anyway, OP, apologies for the derail.

@Chunkymenrock

No, no, no. He needs these things (fish etc) to provide optimum nutrition whilst he's growing. He can go vegan when he's 18 if he wants.

Definitely not true though

@GrandmasCat

A vegan diet can be very healthy provided you do it correctly (and take supplements). In fact that is true for more diets. BUT…

Removing key nutrients from a diet without substituting them with something that provides similar nutrients (not similar appearance ) to make up for those being removed it is the best way to end up with a health problem. For example, the best way to ensure your kid keeps having enough calcium when vegan or allergic is not to find him something vegan that looks like milk or cheese but stuff him with broccoli. Sounds strange? Yes, but if you want to have a healthy diet you need to do your research and changing the way you cook and what you cook.

We make or buy nut cheeses for the taste and the overall nutrients, not as a straight swap for animal milk cheese. We eat a lot of broccoli, as well as dark green leaves like kale, chard, spinach, cabbage and amaranth. As well as a long list of vegetables like gotu kola, pak choi, mustard greens... Agree that broccoli is a superstar, luckily he likes almost every vegetable.

Happy to provide you with my personal recipe book!

Bit stalkerish but hey :) As I mentioned, we always ate a varied omnivorous diet, nose to tail eating, from sea urchins to ant eggs. Both my husband and I love to cook and discover new foods, and our son was not a picky child, never has been.

Ethics are not set in stone and we change.

@LuckyLucyLoot

No, dairy cows in this country are not 'pumped full of antibiotics.' Perhaps you have heard that from an unreliable source but I can confirm it is not true, at least not in the UK.

Antibiotics are given for welfare reasons when needed, using treatment plans drawn up with a vet. There is a withdrawal period for milk and meat, and the milk produced during that period does not go in the tank. Records of medicines given are recorded digitally and submitted regularly to be check by another vet who works for our buyer. Antibiotic resistance is a worry and farmers are working to strict rules in order to reduce their contribution.

I don't have an issue with people being vegan but please don't spread misinformation, question the source you are getting it from. I note that there are several people on here recommending that OP's son eats soya - this is the kind of hypocrisy I don't understand. Go vegan to save the world but import loads of food instead. And no, the soya is not grown for cows in this country anyway, where cows are fed soya it is the waste that humans can't eat. We don't feed any soya.

Thank you. We talk about it too - a lot. We are always looking to learn more. The nut allergy must be really hard. We use pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and tahini quite a lot

* Ethics are not set in stone and we change.*

Really? My ethics are pretty rock solid

@LynetteScavo

It seems you've posted in the wrong place OP - you've received some appalling replies.

A vegan diet absolutely can be done healthily and cheaply. And once you get the hang of it. easily.

Personally I would insist on the vegan fish oil (but then I always insisted my Fish eating DC had a fish oil supplement) At that age I would be giving them a general supplement any, as my DC would go though various phases of not eating certain things such as any green vegetables

As another poster said, don't worry about not being able to have nits for lunch- it's what he eats over a whole day, no in one meal that matters.

If you can find 7 easy recipes your whole family likes you'll feel more at ease cooking familiar dishes and won't feel you're constantly faffing. One for each day of the week. There are loads of vegan books out there now (If you have The Works near you they probably have a good selection at discounted prices, my local one does)

You sound like a lovely mum, OP.I wouldn't want some of the other posters on this thread as my parent

You could be right! I thought the Vegan board WAS the right place. I got more vegan fish oil, which he took today.

We are lucky that he absolutely loves green vegetables, always has. We ate a lot even when we ate meat.

Are nits vegan? Anyway, they seem to have a problem with those at school, too But seriously, I know you are right, it’s just remembering not to send any leftovers with nuts in (like curry with nuts in].

Thank you for the compliment. I’m not always lovely, just doing the best I can. I guess they are too, just different ways of thinking.

Interestingly, though my own parents brought me up as a meat eater, they have slashed their own meat consumption (mostly for health and climate reasons, but also because they have a growth mindset). Other family members find it a genuine threat, though none of us have any comment to make on their diets.

Challenging our own beliefs can be the hardest thing.

@Neurodiversitydoctor

Dd was like this. Honestly the whole family's meals sort of slowly shifted (although the dairy thing was short lived). We eat a lot of beans, lentils and other pulses. Luckily everyone will eat quorn, we like a nut roast (although I think ours contains eggs), I have really gone off cooking meat, although I do eat fish when out. Favourite meals include: 3 bean chilli wraps with rice, guacamole, salad egg Veggi lasange (you would need to find a white sauce substitute) Pizza (ditto) Curry, particularly Dahl Bean burgers and chips Stir fry with cashew nuts Nut roast with all the trimmings Various pasta dishes Various risottos Thai green curry with Tofu Soups with beans/lentils in.

This is great, thank you. It’s funny, I feel the same about meat and though we still ate it when we went out to dinner together, both my husband and I found ourselves struggling to digest meat. There are some situations recently where both of us felt pushed into it - elderly relatives getting genuinely distressed that we’ve changed - and have done so. But we didn’t feel good after. Last week I watched a video of a cow waiting to be slaughtered and I realised I don’t want to be part of that anymore, either.

By the way, Thai green curry with tofu is a very popular dish for us, we eat Thai and Burmese very often, otherwise Indian or Mexican pulse-based dishes. Japanese vegan also. It’s really just staying motivated and being careful to make it all balance out.

@Oftenithinkaboutit

* Ethics are not set in stone and we change.*

Really? My ethics are pretty rock solid

And that’s okay too, we are all different.

For me, though, as I get older I realise there’s still so much I don’t know, and I am not ashamed to reassess former beliefs. Maybe when I reach the end of my life, that’s it, no more changes allowed 😆

But what’s the ethics that are changing here?

@WaltzingBetty yes, thank you I did read and you are correct, and he will respond well to this. He will probably remember it all better than me! His school changed to meatless Mondays and this was a change led by the children (not him, in fact, he takes in his food due to allergies).

But it was them that created a document to educate the parents and teachers and push the change through, and yes, this was in primary.

I agree with you that giving him the task of researching it will be helpful.

And thank you for your kind words :)

@rrhuth

Do you have an idea why he was low in iron etc. pre-giving up meat?

Usually my view has been that it doesn't matter about balanced meals it matters about a balanced diet, so for packed lunches/school trips he can take whatever works and stock up on other food groups at breakfast/tea.

But things like houmous, lentil pate, soya yogurts, falafels etc can all be in packed lunches.

I guess all you can do is batch cook and do basic meals that you can add meat to and he can have vegan protein on the side? I personally wouldn't worry about amazing meals so much as getting the right component parts. My vegetarian kids often took e.g. chick peas in a tub on the side, to add protein.

At his age it is partly his responsibility, so get him learning about what he needs and engaging with it too. Buy him a book on vegan nutrition.

I am not sure why he was low in iron. My dad has also always been low in iron, though he has eaten meat all his life, and me too (and I ate as little as I could until I was in my early twenties).

@Oftenithinkaboutit

But what’s the ethics that are changing here?

Aren’t we talking about the ethics of killing animals so we can eat them, or use them to produce food (eggs, milk)?

If you want to have a debate on ethics though, I still think it’s the wrong place. I hear you that you think it’s wrong to allow a child to become vegetarian/vegan. And that your ethics are set in stone.

I used to think that, too. But I changed my mind

Well exactly

So aren’t those ethics set in stone for you?

Or is your point that others may change their mind?

Genuinely curious and absolutely not after an ethical debate!

I envy where you live OP. i was lucky enough to live in Thailand for a couple of years (when I was vegetarian) and just adored all the variety and glorious food.

DH is vegetarian, and he became so witnessing a goat being slaughtered in the Balkans.

Anyway- I have been both vegetarian and vegan in the past, and returned to meat eating when pregnancy cravings overwhelmed me (plus, it is easy to have the cognitive disconnect when looking at the meat in plastic at the supermarket). It;s 12 years since I started eating meat again and FWIW your son and your thread have put the final nudge into sending me back to at least vegetarianism. (DH will be quietly pleased as well!).