Is your child a vegetarian?
If she is, she's not alone. A December 2008 report from the National Center for Health Statistics noted that about .5% of all kids under 18, or 1 in every 200, chooses a vegetarian diet. Although government researchers suspect that this is more due to ethical concerns than health-related ones, a vegetarian diet certainly can be a healthy choice. After all, eating lots of fruits and veggies is definitely a good thing. But some vegetarian kids swap chicken, steak, and fish for French fries, white bread, and cookies—not exactly a beneficial trade. Others may not get enough of the nuts, beans, and dairy foods they need for calcium and protein.
Whether your kid is a veggie-lover or not, check out this list of 42 healthy snack ideas. The great majority are meatless and all are kid-friendly. If your child, or your whole family, is vegetarian, let us know what some of your favorite snacks and meals are!
Comments
My 12-year-old daughter would like to be a vegetarian (because she loves animals so much), but the problem is she doesn’t really like any non-meat protein sources besides dairy — no nuts, eggs or beans. Plus I’m not willing to cook two different dinners every night.
After her bugging me about it for a while, I finally said OK if she prepared her own dinner most nights and she included beans and nuts in her diet. She lasted about 3 days.
But in the end, we compromised. I try to cook meatless dinners more frequently and reduce the amount of meat I use when I do cook it. So the whole family benefits.
Lauren-
We are a mostly vegetarian family (we eat a little fish). We use a couple of meat substitutes that are so close to the real thing that a meat eater would never know. Try out the line of Quorn products. They are in the freezer section of some grocery stores and a lot of health food stores. We use the pieces in everything from tacos to “chicken” and noodles. My kids LOVE the Morningstar breakfast strips (I call it “facon” = fake bacon).
And chili can easily be made with either veggies crumbles or no meat substitute. Add a can of black beans for extra protein. The whole family will like it.
As far as favorite snacks and meals, we eat a lot of pasta for dinner. We also keep dried fruits, cheese, yogurt, and crackers made from whole grains on hand for the children to snack on.
It’s virtually impossible to keep HFCS and refined flours and sugars completely out of the house. But I like to read labels and go for the healthier brand if there is a choice.
We aren’t saints, but I have to believe that our family’s diet is better than most.
My now five year-old son has always preferred vegetables over his meat. Previously overheard at our dinner table, “Evan, you won’t get any more carrots until you eat your meat!!!”.
Vegetarians and Vegans have the same problem as everyone else. Getting nutritious food that tastes good without all the pestcides, biocides, and all those other “cides” that were designed to kill something.
Some of the best foods for everyone are sea vegetables. They, unlike land grown foods, are grown in the most nutrient rich “medium” on the face of the planet! Sea water! Sea water contains nutrients, minerals, and vitamins that the body needs and all are in natural state and useable by our bodies. Things like Calcium and Fiber, Omega 3,6,9, Iron, Zinc, Iodine, and up to 70 different plant source minerals are contained in sea veggies just waiting to go to work for your body. Kelp is also a good source of protien at 1.7g/100g.
Sea veggies are actually a great “diet food” because they are fat free and low in calories plus the Iodine helps the Thyriod gland adjust and maintain a weight “neutral”. A large percentage of Thyroidisms today are due to a deficiency of Iodine.
An important factor is heat. Heat, over 118 degrees,especially for calcium, ruins the nutritional value as it becomes useless to our bodies. Yes, all pasteurized milk has calcium, but it is unuseable by the human body!
If you were to combine cold processed sea vegetables, super fruits, anti-oxidants, and select fruit concentrates into a natural chewable supplement, it would be a dream come true for us all.
http://www.chews4health.com/smart4life