13 year old DS has decided he wants to be a vegetarian

thriftwizard

My 19 y.o. DD2 has been veggie for a couple of years now, though technically I believe she's a pescatarian, as she does still eat fish. She also eats eggs & some dairy, as she can see where the eggs come from - at the bottom of the garden, from very happy but totally non-veggie chickens she's known from day-old - and I can get fresh raw milk from a local "pet" herd of Guernseys. I made it clear from the first day that she announced she was "going over" that she was responsible for her own meals, if I was cooking things she found objectionable, and she's taken a very intelligent interest in balancing her own diet. We have a fish meal once a week, and I have always cooked & served lots of vegetables with everything, so at Sunday lunch she just fills a plate with roast spuds (in sunflower oil) steamed carrots, leeks, broccoli, or similar, roasted veg (parsnips, sweet potato & onion) and baked squash, all of which are available to everyone else alongside the meat. Anything that isn't eaten gets chucked into soup for lunches during the week.

She does not, and will not, eat any "fake" meat or dairy products; she'd rather have mushrooms than Quorn, and TVP makes her shudder. However, she does eat lentils (usually curried) beans & chickpeas; she can whisk up fresh falafels or home-made hummus in minutes, and they're delicious.

So she was that little bit older when she gave up meat, but to be fair I think she wouldn't have done it any differently if she'd been 14 instead of 17. I totally respect her choice, and have to say she's very cheap to feed, as I can get good, often locally-grown, vegetables very cheaply at our local street market. She's slender, but not unduly so, and her skin & hair glow, and we've had very little teenage angst & door-slamming from her since her "conversion".

We act as host family for foreign students in summer and I get paid extra for hosting vegetarians. Mostly, those who say they are, aren't; they've just been warned (sadly) that British food is so dreadful they're better off avoiding meat altogether. (They come from a part of the world where nearly all food is home-prepared; many of them are used to going home from school for a cooked lunch!) So I always serve a vegetarian option, but don't fuss if they eat the meat too.

There are so many interesting recipes, ideas & ingredients easily available now, particularly from the middle & far East, that vegetarianism isn't the dietary straitjacket that it used to be. Enjoy experimenting with your son!