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Teenagers are very impressionable and tend to become more left-wing than their parents, because they are under the influence of their teachers, who tend to be more left-wing as well. This tends to make teenagers more in touch with environmental issues and other world problems. This can send teenagers off in many directions, and one of the most well-liked, especially among teenage girls, is vegetarianism.

This phase frequently passes for one reason or another. Occasionally the parents cannot be bothered to cater to their new diet and occasionally the teenager simply misses bacon sandwiches too much to keep up the diet. However, many do stick to their principles or come back to them later on in life.

Their children going vegetarian is often a cause for concern for parents, yet it need not be. If your teenagers take up vegetarianism you will probably be anxious that they get enough protein, yet that can be taken care of. Instead, be grateful that they will be missing out on all the rubbish food that most teenagers eat in these, their most formative years.

If your teenager wants to become a vegetarian, you ought to encourage it, even though it will cost you more time particularly if you do not know much about vegetarianism yourself. It will be a steep learning curve for you and your children in the starting.

One of the first things that a parent has to judge is to what degree does their child want to go. Does he or she merely want to give up meat or also give up fish or go the whole hog (!) and give up milk, dairy and eggs as well. These three levels make vegetarianism progressively more difficult.

One of the foremost problems about going vegetarian (particularly for developing teenagers) is vitamin deficiency. Meat is concentrated vegetable matter and is our main source of vitamins such as calcium, vitamin B12 and iron.

You cannot live without these vitamins and a number of others besides, so if you give up meat, you will have to take them in tablet form until you find or adopt a means of re-introducing them into your diet in food form.

There will be many new foods for your teenager to taste in their task to replace meat and some of these options might be unpalatable, depending on your child’s outlook on eating new foods.

Tofu is one. Some people love it and some people can’t stand it, but it is a very handy alternative to meat. There are others, but it could be a long process of trial and error and your teen might just stop.

If your teenager wants to stop, it is probably a good idea to make it easy for them to do so without them losing face or feeling that they have failed. It is difficult to make lifestyle alterations even at that relatively young age and who knows, perhaps they will return to (a degree of) vegetarianism when they leave home and start cooking for themselves.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on several subjects, and is now concerned with low fat low cholesterol diets. If you would like to know more, please visit our site at http://vegetariancasserolerecipes.com

Vegetarians have always had the image of being on the fringe. In the Fifties, they were the Beatniks and in the following decades, they were the Hippies. Vegetarians have always been depicted as individuals with long hair, wearing sandals and clad in clothes woven from natural products. Weirdos, some would say.

However, things have eventually been altering during the last ten or twenty years. There are so many vegetarians these days that they can no longer be known as on the fringe. Everyone knows a vegetarian nowadays and plenty of people opt not to eat meat at every meal time.

The fact is that vegetarians come in numerous different levels of vegetarian. There are those who will quite happily sit at the same table as meat-eaters but there are those who will not. I once shared a house with two vegetarians.

While they went away on holiday for a fortnight, I decided to cook a chicken (something I was not allowed to do whilst they were there). When they came back ten days later, they knew that I had cooked a chicken and I had to promise never to do it again or move out.

Then there are vegetarians who will eat fish and there are those who will not and those who will consume dairy products and eggs, and those that will not. There are many levels of vegetarianism, the strictest being veganism, which means no animal protein whatsoever.

This can mean that vegetarians and vegans suffer from various nutrient deficiencies that are concentrated in meat, fish, milk and cheese. However, it is usually only beginners who undergo these problems. Long term vegetarians know the dangers and either eat a very varied vegetarian diet or take vitamin tablets.

One effective way of replacing animal proteins is by eating beans, pulses, lentils and nuts. This is not an arduous task, but it does require more thought than slinging a hamburger on the griddle or barbecue. This is one of the issues for busy vegetarians – preparing food takes a great deal longer.

Tofu and other products derived from soya beans are a boon for vegetarians, because it has all the protein one needs and is very versatile. It does not really have any taste of its own, but it absorbs flavours from whatever it is prepared with.

In general, it can be said that vegetarians have to eat more bulk than carnivores, because meat is concentrated vegetables. So, vegetarians normally have to eat more and also eat more varied food yet also make sure that they get all the vitamins that a body needs.

The result of being a vegetarian though is that no animal suffers for you and you get plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, which do not contain a lot of calories. Vegetarians are not usually overweight and they seldom suffer from constipation and the diseases that are linked with eating too much meat, including cholesterol and high blood pressure problems.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several subjects, and is now concerned with low fat low cholesterol diets. If you would like to know more, visit our website at http://vegetariancasserolerecipes.com