Little Vegetarians

Getting proper nutrients for our young ones (and ourselves) when exploring a meatless diet.

My Daughter is my carbon copy. She wants to save everybody and everything. Lately she has been driving me a little nutso with all the talk she has been learning in school about global warming, cruelty to animals, recycling, and so on. Last week I was getting ready to fill the watering can and I was ignoring her plea to remove the live june bug that was trapped inside. I was in a hurry, had things to do. Way too many to turn my can upside down and save the poor critter. “Mom, when did you become a killer?” She cried. I stopped cold. It wasn’t just the act of bug cruelty I was about to commit, but the notion of me being “too busy”. Too busy to listen to my 8 year old’s thoughts on the condition of the planet. Too busy to implement her plans for making our house “green” one simple act at a time. And too busy to shake the bug out of my watering can despite her passionate plea.

That exchange opened my mind back up to a time when I had the “time” to care. Coincidentally, I saw the authors of the book SKINNY BITCH on the ELLEN show that day. The getting healthy aspect got my attention so I picked it up a copy. I was a mostly vegetarian in my 20s, purely for health reasons. It was never ethical. I knew the book was going to have some anti meat propaganda in it and I planned to just skim those sections and hit on the rest. As it turned out I was horrified, disgusted, and angered by what I learned. I haven’t had a piece of meat since and that was almost 2 weeks ago. I quit cold tofurkey.

Now my Daughter is loving this. She is not aware of the extent of the animal cruelty practiced at factory farms, but she is aware that we are eating “sweet creatures” and she doesn’t like it. I am allowing her to explore meatless options with me, although if she forgets and has a piece of pepperoni pizza I am not reminding her. I am proud of her kind spirit and convictions and am not going to make her feel like she let anyone or anything down.

People around us are naturally concerned, though, that she will not get proper nutrition. A common misguided belief, vegetarianism among children is even considered by some to be child abuse. I would say it’s more unhealthy to feed kids McDonalds on a regular with no addition of fruits and vegetables to their diets.

You certainly don’t need to eat meat or even dairy to get proper nutrition. Vitamins are lurking everywhere, you just need to know how to find them. Snatched straight from the SKINNY BITCHES here are some examples of where you can get your nutrients if you decide to go meatless.

• CALCIUM… broccoli, nuts, seeds, soybeans, and molasses.
• IRON… nuts, pumpkin seeds, beans, lentils, oatmeal, spinach, broccoli, peas, green beans, asparagus, and whole grains.
• MAGNESIUM… nuts, sunflower seeds, soybeans, molasses.
• The B vitamins… oatmeal, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, soybeans, lentils, bananas, veggies, brown ride, wheat germ, bran and figs.
• Vitamin C… broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, green peppers, spinach, potatoes, grapefruits, oranges, papayas.
• Vitamin D… 15 minutes of direct exposure to sunshine!
• Vitamin E… whole grain cereals, whole wheat, nuts, sunflower seeds, leafy greens, vegetable oils.
• Zinc… wheat germ, whole grains, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, soybeans.

That’s not so hard, right? You can get almost everything you need with good fresh foods, nothing exotic, without even taking a supplement. The exception being B-12 which is only found in animal products so that is the one supplement needed.

Our young ones are so innocent and so inspiring. My Sari reminds me to be a better person every day. How do your young ones inspire you?