More turning to the meatless alternative

By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
October 20, 1999

For meat-eating parents, a child proclaiming his or her desire to convert to a vegetarian diet may indeed be a scary prospect.

But it’s something more parents are facing on a daily basis. There are now more teenage vegetarians than ever before in the United States. According to a recent Roper poll, 11 percent of girls aged 13 to 17 said they eat no meat. And some 15 percent of the nation’s 15 million college students reported that they eat vegetarian meals at school.

But let’s face it. Kids will be kids. And for some teens, a veggie diet is carte blanche to eat all the potato chips and soda they can consume in one sitting.

“Meat does provide a lot of nutrients,” Gina Hammarlund, a registered dietitian and associate professor at the Chicago Medical School’s department of nutrition. “If a diet is a typical diet of salty snack foods and meat, and you take the meat away, then you’re making a poor diet even poorer. If you’re going to delete one food group, you have to replace it from another food group and that’s where my role would come in.”

For protein and calcium, Hammarlund says she would recommend tofu. Kids, however–as well as many adults–recoil at the mere suggestion of eating the soy product. And if you can’t get them to eat it, it doesn’t do any good.

“A lot of kids do say no to tofu,” Hammarlund says, laughing. “So then I would suggest, `How about fortified orange juice?’ Supplements are fine, but I encourage patients to get the nutrients from food if at all possible.”

Experts say that with a little guidance, parents can help steer their children to a healthy, vegetarian diet that won’t leave them lacking for nutrients or bloated because of sodium.

“Most teenagers don’t have the greatest diets to begin with,” says Dr. Reed Mangels of the Vegetarian Resource Group, an advocacy and education group in Baltimore. “But just by virtue of becoming a vegetarian, their diets clean up a little bit, because fast food isn’t as much of an option anymore. Maybe instead of getting a Big Mac or a burrito with sour cream and cheese, they’ll order a Gardenburger or a bean burrito.

“The thing parents have to take into account is that since kids can’t just do a Big Mac anymore, what are they going to eat for snacks or on their way to work? Will they be able to get to a salad bar or pick up a yogurt? Because to have them just not eat isn’t an option.”

When Sandra Hwang’s daughter declared 10 years ago that she wanted to be a vegetarian, the Chicago mother of three says she wasn’t concerned.

“Caroline was 14 and changed her mind about things every two weeks,” says Hwang. “I figured she would give up once she saw the rest of us eating ribs. But she stuck to it. At first I was worried that she would become too thin. I also didn’t want to spend all my time cooking vegetables. We began cooking together and learned to respect each other’s choices. It wasn’t that a big deal and now I’m almost vegetarian.”

Changing to a vegetarian diet is definitely easier with parental involvement.

Jamie Deutch, 16, and her 13-year-old sister, Elly, grew up in an environment where there was little red meat to begin with in their family fridge.

“I’ve been a vegetarian for eight years,” says Jamie, a junior at Evanston Township High School. “My mom never really ate that much red meat, and it was never that tasty to me. So I decided to try being vegetarian. I thought it’d be cool and different. Plus, no one thought that I could do it.”

Laughing, she adds, “I’m not like a hard-core animal activist, but I didn’t like eating something that I like to play with.”

Deutch says the majority of her friends aren’t vegetarians, and one group of male friends enjoy teasing her by shoving beef jerky in her face or trying to eat tuna in her car.

But her boyfriend as well as another close friend are vegetarians. So when their friends go out for burgers, they’ll opt for “grilled cheese sandwiches or whatnot.”

As for her father, who enjoys the occasional juicy steak, Deutch says, “He has no problems with me being a vegetarian. He eats vegetables and stuff all the time. But he loves it when my friends come over, ’cause then he can order a sausage pizza for them and have a couple slices.”

The Chicago Medical School’s Hammarlund emphasizes, “It’s very important that parents are supportive. The dinner table can end up being a battleground and cause kids to go off in an undesireable direction to show that they have control over their lives.

“Kids often try alternative food habits mainly as a way for them to exert their independence. But you do want to get down to their underlying reason for wanting to change their diets, and is it masking a potential eating disorder? Then once you’ve figured that out, you help the child plan a diet that she will eat.”

Getting the teenagers involved in making their own meals is one way to give them some control.

Laura Levy Shatkin, a former health care professional who teaches cooking at Ovens of Evanston, says that she’s seeing more and more teenagers sign up for her classes.

“Teens don’t eat healthfully all the time,” she says. “That’s just the nature of kids. But teaching them to eat healthier, even part of the time, is beneficial to them. Let them eat their corn chips, but have them dip it in a little bean dip–which is really easy to make–or some hummus.”

Yeah, but what about that tofu?

“Tofu has a reputation for being bland,” she continues. “But once you teach them that it’s a sponge that will take on the flavor of whatever it’s cooked with, they get a little more excited about it.”

As seventh-grader Sara Todd of Evanston says, “I eat a lot of tofu and veggie burgers, but I eat regular food, too. I like potato chips and cheese and pasta. Regular stuff.”