For Teens, Eating Vegetables Isn’t Just a Matter of Course

When 14-year-old Katie Blackwell goes to a fast-food restaurant with her friends, she orders a hamburger with extra cheese--then asks them to hold the meat.

In the school cafeteria, she buys bean burritos instead of burgers. And when she has dinner at a friend’s house, she eats only what she can digest--in good conscience--on her vegetarian diet.

Katie, an eighth-grader at Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach, says her friends don’t push her to eat the way they do or make fun of her because she can’t bite into a hamburger without seeing the image of a slaughtered cow.

On the contrary, she says, many of her peers are as appalled by the idea of eating animals as she is. Some have joined her in boycotting meat, while others sympathize, wishing they had enough discipline to take the next step and make dramatic changes in their diets.

Katie admits that she occasionally eats a piece of chicken or fish when her mother feels she needs some extra protein, but she does so reluctantly--and always with guilt. “I think it’s really sad that they kill animals just for people to eat,” she says. “And I think it’s better for your body not to have animal fat.”

Vegetarianism is no longer the counterculture statement it was in the ‘60s, when it was one of the ways in which peace-loving hippies in backwoods communes demonstrated their distaste for the omnivorous Establishment.

Today, with medical researchers warning that too much animal protein increases the risk of heart disease and may even weaken the resistance to cancer, vegetarianism has become a legitimate lifestyle choice for health-conscious consumers.

The fact that eager-to-fit-in young people feel comfortable being labeled as vegetarians is probably the best evidence that--whether you’re motivated by philosophical beliefs or health concerns--you can leave the ranks of omnivores today without being seen as an iconoclast.

Faith Popcorn, the professional trend spotter who predicted that “cocooning” would be one of the major movements of the ‘90s, recently told Vegetarian Times that she sees people at all levels of society turning to vegetarianism.

“Steak is not stylish; vegetarianism is,” she says.

But the retreat from meat is more than a trend, according to Popcorn. She believes that, for many, it represents a “permanent lifestyle shift.” And she predicts that children--who are, she says, very much not interested in “eating anything that could be seen as a pet”--will contribute to this movement by exercising influence over their parents.

Young people who decide to become vegetarians naturally find it much easier to stick to special diets if they have support from their parents, who must make an extra effort to include vegetarian dishes in family meals.

Mary Jane Blackwell, whose daughter, Katie, first expressed interest in vegetarianism when she was in sixth grade, points out that it takes a lot of planning--and creativity--to maintain a healthful vegetarian diet. And it’s complicated in a family in which there are avid meat eaters.

At her house, Blackwell says, the bread is sometimes the only part of the meal the entire family shares at dinner.

Looi and Bill Goring, who live down the street from the Blackwells in Santa Ana Heights, simplified a similar situation in their home by having their vegetarian teen-ager make her own meals.

Kali, who is 17 and was once a “big-time meat eater,” says she turned to vegetarianism four years ago after reading about the subject at a “whole-life fair.”

“Trying to eat meat the next day was weird,” she recalled. “You don’t associate the wrapped hamburger in front of you with something that was once living and breathing and feeling. Once I started to do that, it seemed selfish to eat meat just because it tastes good.”

After two weeks of studying the literature she brought home from the fair, Kali announced that she had decided to become a vegetarian, and she’s been one ever since.

“Nobody thought it was a good idea,” she says. “My parents thought it was just a phase. They kept trying to sneak meat into my meals. They were worried that I’d ruin my health.”

Kali, who often exchanges meatless recipes with the Blackwells, tried to get her parents and younger brother to adopt her diet but couldn’t persuade them to give up meat.

Bill Goring admits he relishes a meat-and-potatoes meal and is appalled by some of the foods he sees across the table on his daughter’s plate--especially the tofu. (“That stuff should be used for caulking holes in walls,” he quips.)

However, he does enjoy the combination of onions, potatoes and mushrooms that Kali makes; he puts the vegetarian mix on his hamburgers.

Although they don’t share her philosophical concerns about eating meat, Kali’s parents have been supportive, the teen-ager acknowledges. The fact that Kali decided to include dairy products in her diet--something a strict vegetarian wouldn’t do--helped relieve her parents’ concerns about her health.

“I think, from a general health standpoint, that a vegetarian diet is good if it’s done in moderation,” Bill Goring says.

Mary Jane Blackwell agrees. She insisted at one point that Katie--who, like Kali, never gave up dairy products--start eating chicken and fish again because her diet had become too limited.

“All she wanted to eat was macaroni and cheese and pizza. I told her she couldn’t be a vegetarian unless she ate vegetables,” Blackwell explains. “I was worried about her health because she was still growing and developing.”

Katie eventually resumed her vegetarian diet and began developing a taste for vegetables, including eggplant, zucchini and asparagus, Blackwell adds.

Rebecca Smith, a registered dietitian at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, says she has received many calls from frantic parents complaining that their children have stopped eating meat.

She’s seen young people adopt varying levels of vegetarianism, ranging from those who give up red meat to those who refuse all dairy and meat products. (The most extreme cases she’s seen have involved anorexic teen-agers who’ve become strict vegetarians in order to reduce their fat intake.)

Some parents ask her to try to persuade their children to eat meat, but Smith recommends education instead to teach them how to find protein from plant sources and how to balance their diets to make them nutritionally complete.

If they do that, she stresses, “they can be very healthy children.”

Smith urges parents who are rearing their children as vegetarians from an early age to give the little ones dairy products. A diet without those may cause the children to suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies, she cautions.

“At preschool and toddler age, children are typically picky eaters, and they can’t get enough calories and protein in their diet to sustain normal growth and development because they don’t eat much volume,” Smith explains.

Vicky Chaffin, a registered dietitian at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, points out that children and teen-agers on vegetarian diets must eat a wide variety of foods in order to get the amino acids, vitamins and minerals they need to sustain normal growth.

They also must combine certain foods--beans and rice or vegetables and rice, for example--to get the eight essential amino acids that are found as complete proteins in dairy products, meat and chicken but are incomplete in grains, cereals and vegetables.

Chaffin also recommends that parents make sure young vegetarians are getting enough iron, calcium, vitamin D and B12--all of which are found primarily in milk and meat products.

Doctors might recommend vitamin or mineral supplements for some strict vegetarians, she notes. However, she stresses, you can’t make up for a poor diet “by just taking a vitamin.”