What should a vegetarian eat, and how should I support her?

Question

My cousin, a girl of age 13, decided to become a vegatarian. Her younger siblings are putting her down, and her mom is telling her that she'll develope osteoperosis and all that...

What should a vegetarian eat, to prevent developing health issues? She knows to eat nuts, peanuts, and etc for like...the "good" fats I guess, but anything else she should know?

Also, what can I do to support her? Her mom, younger brother and sister are doing the opposite of helping, and her dad doesn't really care.

btw, i already asked this in food and drink- vegetarian for the nutrition stuff...so i'm just asking this question is this category for how to support her, since some of the parents here might have experienced similar circumstances, and am still asking about the food things in case anyone who sees this question knows anything.

Thanks

Answer 1

she won't get osteoporosis if she drinks plenty of milk and eats cheese and broccoli and other high calcium foods. it's very important for her to have plenty of calcium, as she won't be getting it from meat anymore. same for proteins. nuts and peanut butter and seeds and stuff are good sources of protein. basically, just lots of high-calcium, high-protein stuff. maybe a multivitamin or so. it sounds like she's got a good handle on that aspect of it.

to support her, make sure she knows that you're proud of her choice. get her a vegetarian cookbook of easy, simple vegetarian stuff. when she's at your place and with your family, make sure that there's a vegetarian option for her, a good one. if she ever feels down about having to eat separate foods from the rest of her family, just comfort her and help her feel better about it. it's not too different then how you'd support her in doing anything else.

here's one way she can get her family to be more supportive: every so often, tell her to cook them a vegetarian meal. cooking sucks, but if she makes her family vegetarian food once in a while, they'll come to realize that it's very possible to be healthy and a vegetarian. in fact, in today's world, it's one of the healthiest ways of eating there are.

at any rate, if she's firm in her beliefs, her family will realize this and accommodate her better. if her family is supportive, it's not a huge change.

Answer 2

The biggest problem that vegans and vegetarians have is the lack of iron in their diet. They can get calcium from broccoli and other plants but plants are iron poor so she needs to take iron supplements to avoid anemia; a sickness in the red blood cells.
There are many good reasons to become a vegetarian including health, ethical, and emotional ones as well as diet and religious.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarian
"There is considerable debate over whether humans are physiologically better suited to a herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore diet. The Vegetarian Resource Group and others however, have concluded that humans are naturally omnivores....

Vegetarian diets typically contain similar levels of iron to non-vegetarian diets but this has lower bioavailability than iron from meat sources, and its absorption can be inhibited by other dietary constituents. Vegan diets are usually higher in iron than vegetarian diets because dairy products are low in iron."

However, a simple iron supplement will handle that since the diet isn't major iron deficient.

She should really read this section of the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarian#Nutrition and understand that the diet isn't perfect and that the more restricted the fewer valuable nutrients she will take in. However, she can make up for almost all of that with multivitamins (Consumer Reports has recommended Centrum as the most absorbable and I use it myself).

She should know that humans are designed to eat some meat, but only occasionally, now where as much as we currently do. If she is reasonably careful then she will do fine, in fact better than anyone else in her family.

For support with the family you can point out all that advantages in the article. For her support send her to this Google Search: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4WZPA_enUS224US224&q=vegan+society and put her in contact with the vegan community. There are many people out there who are vegetarians and vegans. Vegans are a bit more radical, but still have some valid points.

She should read this article: http://www.vegsoc.org/info/vegan-nutrition.html

Here is a list of books at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-0914754-2995912?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=vegetarian&x=18&y=21
That will give her some recipes and pointers. Getting her one of these books would be a very concrete bit of support.

Once she learns of all the health benefits of a vegetarian diet she will realize that she is making a good decision, once she realizes that she will not have the weight problems common to so many kids her age she will realize that she is going to be happier. Tell her to laugh at her brothers and she can say that when they get fat and die early she can stand on their graves and laugh. As for her mother once she sees exactly what things her daughter needs to look for and include in her diet then she will realize that she is not taking any risks here and will probably do better, health wise, than the rest of her family. Her mom should push more veggies on the family and support her daughter in her decision; for the reasons why you only have to check the Wikipedia article and read them. It they aren’t enough then have her get in touch with the vegan community and they will come up with hundreds of more reasons. Another advantage that might actually appeal to her father is that veggies are cheaper than meat, a lot cheaper. Nuts are expensive, but not that expensive. If the entire family started eating just half the meat they eat now and more veggies he will see are real savings on the family grocery bill.

Answer 3

Don't try and change her mind, I think that is the best you can do. I have had people tell me that we didn't climb to the top of the food chain just to eat leaves which I think people should learn a little more respect. It's okay to tease, my boyfriend likes to joke around that I'm eating rabbit food if I have a salad. Show her that you are always there to listen, ok.

Answer 4

She needs to eat a well balanced diet. She needs to make sure she eats plenty of high protein foods, and make sure her diet has enough calcium, magnesium, etc. Tofu is a good substitute. You can cook tofu in anything, and it takes on the flavor of whatever it's being cooked with.

Answer 5

i am a vegetarian too. but if only eat nut, vegetable and bean, it will very easy to be bore. you can go to some Chinese vegetarian food store. there are so many different vegetarian food that look like meat and many flavors.

Answer 6

Lots of protein which are in beans, peanut butter, soy, rice.
There's a whole list.
She can drink milk also to get protein.
That's all I can really manage.
I was a vegetarian for 4 months.....but sadly quit.

Answer 7

I am vegitarian, but i would suggest her starting as a Flaxaterian. a Flaxaterian is a person who only eats white meat from chicken and turkey. thats a way of not totally going veggitarian but its not killing cows/pigs