Teenagers are very impressionable and tend to become more left-wing than their parents, because they are under the influence of their teachers, who tend to be more left-wing as well. This tends to make teenagers more in touch with environmental issues and other world problems. This can send teenagers off in many directions, and one of the most well-liked, especially among teenage girls, is vegetarianism.
This phase often passes for one reason or another. Sometimes the parents cannot be bothered to cater to their new diet and occasionally the teenager just misses bacon sandwiches as well much to sustain the diet. However, many do stick to their principles or come back to them later on in life.
Their children going vegetarian is often a cause for concern for parents, but it should not be. If your teenagers take up vegetarianism you will probably be concerned that they get enough protein, yet that can be taken care of. Instead, be thankful that they will be missing out on all the junk food that most teenagers eat in these, their most formative years.
If your teenager wants to become a vegetarian, you should encourage it, even though it will cost you more time especially if you do not know much about vegetarianism yourself. It will be a steep learning curve for you and your children in the starting.
One of the first things that a parent has to judge is to what degree does their child want to go. Does he or she merely want to give up meat or also give up fish or go the whole hog (!) and give up milk, dairy and eggs as well. These three levels make vegetarianism progressively more difficult.
One of the main concerns about going vegetarian (especially for developing teenagers) is vitamin deficiency. Meat is concentrated vegetable matter and is our main source of vitamins such as calcium, vitamin B12 and iron.
You cannot do without these vitamins and several others besides, so if you give up meat, you will have to take them in tablet form until you find or take up a means of re-introducing them into your diet in food form.
There will be numerous new foods for your teenager to taste in their task to replace meat and some of these options may be unpalatable, depending on your child’s outlook on eating new foods.
Tofu is one. Some people love it and some people hate it, but it is a very handy alternative to meat. There are others, but it could be a long process of trial and error and your teen may just quit.
If your teenager wants to quit, it is probably a good idea to make it simple for them to do so without them losing face or feeling that they have failed. It is a problem to undertake lifestyle changes even at that relatively young age but who knows, maybe they will return to (a degree of) vegetarianism after they leave home and begin cooking for themselves.
If you are worried about Child Safety on the Internet or Child Safety in general, please visit our web-based resource.