How to convince my parents to let me be a vegitarian?

Question

So the dilemma is my parents, more so my mom doesn't believe I should be a vegitarian since people kill the animals anyway and it's the way life should be. She thinks eating meat is the only way to be healthy. \: So how do I convince her I can be healthy and cut meat out of my diet at the same time.

I am 14 by the way, so my opionions probably don't really convince them since they think I'm being crazy for wanting to do this. I've been trying to do this since I was 11-ish. Since I love animals so much and I don't really like the fact that I am eating them. ]:

Atleast if they don't let me become one, as soon as I turned 18 or so and I can make my own choices would it be to late if I became a vegitarian then?

And is becoming a vegitarian expensive with buying all the veggie products like mock-meat and soy products?

And I thought alot of tofu or something cause breast cancer???

Answer 1

Try cooking your own vegetarian meals. That's what I did and I think it showed my parents that I'm passionate about it and mature enough to change my diet in a healthy way and cater for myself.

Answer 2

Iam so not a vegitarian ,but i could try helping,ok,first you should ask her why doe she eat animals ,second how doe the animals think of her eating them,third if its healthy for us but is it healthy for the animals,fourth how would she feel if somthing or someone els had eaten you or killed you,fith if she felt bad if you gotten hurt how would she think the animal feel if there family had gotten hurt,cuz animals have familys too ,sixth if she keep eating all the animals there would be none to eat anny way,so why eat now,and last if she could say don't treat people the way you don't wanna be treated then why treat animals that way,then tell her how blessed she would have really be if she had helped you out and support your opinoin.AND TELL HER YOU LOVE HER TO GET HER GOING!

THE FOOD YOU COULD EAT IS:

-candy,cakes ,eggs dont count as an animal cuz it have not became a living thing yet and dont have a chance once the are refregirate.

-bread,cerial,most boxed or caned foods.

-soda,juce,milk,water,ice cream.

-vegie burgers,fries,potatos,vegies,fruits.

-NOTHING that is pork,beef,turkey,ham,steak,brownswaga,ro... loaf fish,crabs,lobster,strimp,clams,musculs,... soop and chilie,or Wierd foods like rabits,frogs,camels.

Answer 3

boca burgers are good, but depending on what sorta vegeterian you'd want to be.

But boca burgers are good, and this is coming from a meat eater.  I just eat them in support of my gf's diet.

Answer 4

I once asked my parents if I could be a vegitarian, but they told me I couldn't be a typographical error, so I worked towards being a vegun.

Answer 5

you should write a well writen essay explaing to your parents why you dont want to eat meat. When your parents (or who ever) makes food just dont eat the meat part you (no one killed chocolate for you to eat it it grows on a tree) you dont have to eat healthy because you are a vegitarian. It would be wise though you arent gettin all the proten thats in meat so you need a substitue for that.

Answer 6

Explain to them how badly the animals are treated and tell them about the health advantages. I am thirteen and it took a while for my mom to except it too, and my brothers girlfriend thinks that it is silly, witch it is NOT.  Just give it time.  

A lot of tofu will not cause breast cancer, in fact it is very good for you. Being a vegetarian is not nearly as expensive as eating meat.  Veggie burgers are cheaper than real meat. Also, it is never to late to become a vegetarian and you can eat sweets as long as you eat nutritious food also!

Good Luck!

Tell her that any slaughter house worker will say that it does happen very often.  My mother went into a slaughter house once and she saw a cows stomach cut open while it was still fully conscious.

Answer 7

1. 15-minute vegetarian : 200 quick, easy, and delicious recipes the whole family will love / Susann Geiskopf-Hadler and Mindy Toomay.



  

2.    

Amber waves of grain : traditional American whole foods cooking & contemporary vegetarian, vegan & macrobiotic cuisine / Alex and Gale Jack ; foreword by Michio and Aveline Kushi ; illustrations by Rod House.



  

3.    

American wholefoods cuisine : 1300 meatless wholesome recipes from short order to gourmet / Nikki & David Goldbeck ; preface by Barbara Haber.



  

4.    

A beautiful bowl of soup : the best vegetarian recipes / by Paulette Mitchell ; photographs by William Meppem.



  

5.    

The best of Lord Krishna's cuisine : favorite recipes from The art of Indian vegetarian cooking / Yamuna Devi.



  

6.    

The best vegetarian recipes : from greens to grains, from soups to salads : 200 bold-flavored recipes / Martha Rose Shullman.



  

7.    

Betty Crocker easy everyday vegetarian : meatless main dishes you'll love!



  

8.    

The big book of vegetarian : more than 225 recipes for breakfasts, appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, main dishes, sides, breads, and desserts / by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley.



  

9.    

Cafe Flora cookbook / Catherine Geier with Carol Brown.



  

10.    

Carb-conscious vegetarian : 150 delicious recipes for a healthy lifestyle / Robin Robertson.



  

11.    

Classic vegetarian cooking from the Middle East & North Africa / Habeeb Salloum.



  

12.    

Compassionate cuisine : gourmet vegetarian recipes & the philosophy and culture of caring / Vrnda Devi.



  

13.    

The complete book of vegetarian grilling : over 150 easy and tasty recipes you can grill indoors and out / Susann Geiskopf-Hadler.  



  

14.    

The complete idiot's guide to being vegetarian / by Frankie Avalon Wolfe.  



  

15.    

Complete vegetarian cookbook / Charmaine Solomon.



  

16.    

The complete vegetarian handbook : recipes & techniques for preparing delicious, healthful cuisine / by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley ; illustrations by David Pollard.



  

17.    

The contented vegetarian / Matthew Drennan and Annie Nichols.



  

18.    

Cook 1.0 : a fresh approach to the vegetarian kitchen : breakfast, lunch + dinner / Heidi Swanson ; foreword by Art Smith. (



  

19.    

Cooking the Cuban way : culturally authentic foods, including low-fat and vegetarian recipes / by Alison Behnke and Victor Manuel Valens.



  

20.    

Cooking the Vietnamese way : to include new low-fat and vegetarian recipes / Chi Nguyen and Judy Monroe.



  

21.    

The enlightened kitchen : fresh vegetable dishes from the temples of Japan / Mari Fujii ; photographs by Tae Hamamura ; translation by Richard Jeffery.



  

22.    

Entertaining for a veggie planet : 250 down-to-earth recipes / Didi Emmons.



  

23.    

Ethical markets : growing the green economy / Hazel Henderson with Simran Sethi ; foreword by Hunter Lovins.



  

24.    

The ethnic vegetarian : traditional and modern recipes from Africa, America, and the Caribbean / Angela Shelf Medearis, author of Ideas for Entertaining from the African-American Kitchen.



  

25.    

Everyday Greens : home cooking from Greens, the celebrated vegetarian restaurant / by Annie Somerville.



  

26.    

The flexitarian table : inspired, flexible meals for vegetarians, meat lovers, and everyone in between / Peter Berley, with Zoe Singer ; photographs by Quentin Bacon.



  

27.    

Fresh food fast : delicious, seasonal vegetarian meals in under an hour / Peter Berley and Melissa Clark.



  

28.    

The gluten-free vegetarian kitchen : delicious and nutritious wheat-free, gluten-free dishes / Donna Klein.



  

29.    

The healthy hedonist holidays : a year of multicultural, vegetarian-friendly holiday feasts / Myra Kornfeld ; illustrated by Sheila Hamanaka.  



  

30.    

Hope's edge : the next diet for a small planet / Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe.



  

31.    

How to cook everything vegetarian : simple meatless recipes for great food / Mark Bittman ; illustrations by Alan Witschonke.



  

32.    

How to cook everything. Vegetarian cooking / Mark Bittman ; illustrations by Alan Witschonke.



  

33.    

India's vegetarian cookery / Monisha Bharadwaj ; photography of India by Jenner Zimmermann ; food photography by Will Heap.



  

34.    

Living among meat eaters : the vegetarian's survival handbook / Carol J. Adams.



  

35.    

Living in the raw gourmet / Rose Lee Calabro.

  

36.    

Low-carb vegetarian / Margo DeMello.



  

37.    

Low-carb vegetarian cooking : 150 entrees to make low-carb vegetarian cooking easy and fun / Sue Spitler with Linda R. Yoakam.

  

38.    

Mediterranean harvest : vegetarian recipes from the world's healthiest cuisine / Martha Rose Shulman.



  

39.    

Mediterranean vegetarian cooking / Paola Gavin.



  

40.    

New vegetarian cooking : 120 fast, fresh, and fabulous recipes / Rose Elliot.

  

41.    

One-dish vegetarian meals : 150 easy, wholesome, and delicious soups, stews, casseroles, stir-fries, pastas, rice dishes, chilis, and more / Robin Robertson.



  

42.    

Passionate vegetarian / by Crescent Dragonwagon ; illustrated by Robbin Gourley.

  

43.    

The PDQ (pretty darn quick) vegetarian cookbook : 240 healthy and easy no-prep recipes for busy cooks / Donna Klein.

  

44.    

Quick-fix vegetarian / Robin Robertson.

  

45.    

The Real Food Daily cookbook : really fresh, really good, really vegetarian / Ann Gentry with Anthony Head.

  

46.    

Regina's international vegetarian favorites / Regina Campbell.



  

47.    

Silk road cooking : a vegetarian journey / Najmieh Batmanglij.



  

48.    

Twelve months of monastery salads : 200 divine recipes for all seasons / Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette.

49.    

Vegetable soups from Deborah Madison's kitchen / Deborah Madison.



  

50.    

Vegetarian / recipes, Dana Jacobi ; general editor, Chuck Williams ; photography, Bill Bettencourt.



  

51.    

The vegetarian bible / Sarah Brown.



  

52.    

Vegetarian cooking for beginners / Fiona Watt ; illustrated by Kim Lane ; photography by Howard Allman ; recipes by Catherine Atkinson.



  

53.    

Vegetarian cooking for dummies / by Suzanne Havala.

  

54.    

Vegetarian cooking for everyone / Deborah Madison ; [photographs by Laurie Smith ; illustrations by Catherine Kirkwood].



  

55.    

The vegetarian family cookbook / written and illustrated by Nava Atlas.

  

56.    

The vegetarian meat and potatoes cookbook / Robin Robertson.

  

57.    

Vegetarian recipes from around the world / by Sue Townsend and Caroline Young.



  

58.    

Vegetarian sandwiches : fresh fillings for slices, pockets, wraps, and rolls / by Paulette Mitchell ; photographs by Ondine Vierra.



  

59.    

Vegetarian suppers from Deborah Madison's kitchen / Deborah Madison.

  

60.    

Vegetarianism and teens : a hot issue / Kathleen Winkler.

  

61.    

The wild vegetarian cookbook : a forager's culinary guide (in the field or in the supermarket) to preparing and savoring wild (and not so wild) natural foods, with more than 500 recipes / "Wildman" Steve Brill ; foreword by Arthur Schwartz.



  

62.    

A year in a vegetarian kitchen : easy seasonal suppers for family and friends / Jack Bishop ; photographs by Richard Jung



  

63.    

Yoga kitchen : recipes from the Shoshoni Yoga Retreat / Faith Stone and Rachael Guidry..  



  

64.    

You don't need meat / Peter Cox.



also go to

peta.com

goveg.com

vegweb.com

allveggielinks.com

veggielinks.com

vegconnect.comveggieconnection.com

Answer 8

Your parents have probably been taught a huge amount of misinformation by their parents and their teachers while growing up. You really need to research vegetarian diets and health before you even think about saying the "V-word" in front of your parents.

When you have gathered enough information and feel confident in a vegetarian diet's ability to maintain or even improve health, you may mention to them that you have made the decision. They may be shocked, angry, worried, curious or many other things, but you must NEVER react to their behavior and always stay calm. If they are able to speak to you and respect your choice, please tell them everything and answer all questions. If they are rude, inconsiderate, judgmental, violent, or verbally abusive, refuse to continue any conversation until they can speak to you with respect.

The best advice is to study everything that you can about a healthy vegetarian diet and keep yourself in good shape (better than most people your age or than your friends/family if possible). If nobody that you know shows a genuine, positive interest in your choice, don't give them the privilege of the knowledge that you have gathered. Work your way around any attempts they make to trivialize your beliefs and if possible, go shopping with your parents and buy things that aren't obvious veggie fare. Instead of trying to sneak fake meat into the cart, toss in lentil soup, peanut butter, pasta, fruits & veggies or anything else that you have learned is needed to fill any gaps in your diet.

There have been vegan Olympic gold medalists and a vegan woman can create an ENTIRELY NEW,HEALTHY HUMAN BEING INSIDE OF HER. Many of these children stay vegan and grow up to be perfectly healthy adults. So just keep yourself educated about what you eat and don't let anyone tell you that a veg diet is lacking anything essential.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Lewis

http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada...

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If you want to become a lacto-ovo vegetarian, the transition should be quite simple. Almost all meats have widely available commercial replacements. All that you have to do is replace any flesh in your diet (beef, pork, poultry, seafood) with meat analogs or just leave it out altogether.

You should keep in mind that a journey such as this can be quite short but should just be the beginning of a longer one to a plant-based diet with no animal products. This is because of the reality of factory farming in which animals that are kept alive to produce milk, eggs, etc suffer much more and longer than animals that are raised to a certain weight and then slaughtered.http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/

http://meat.org

Some people use the word "vegan" in reference to this idea, but be aware that applying that label to yourself should always come with the inclusion of wise activism and advocacy.http://www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/in...

Two extremely important examples of this are that you should never speak to someone about vegetarianism/veganism without their consent and genuine interest or as a comment on what they are eating AND your dietary beliefs should never be used as an introduction or explanation of who you are as a person. Veg*ism should be something that comes up AFTER people get to know you and they offer you a situation that makes it confusing to withhold the information/discussion. Also, if you are presented something that you choose not to eat or you are

ordering food/eating together somewhere/picking the best place to eat.

When you you hold off on the subject until it's necessary and then act like it isn't a big deal at all, people are usually surprised and WAY more interested and curious than if you were to bring it up when someone's eating or just using it as a conversation starter.

A responsible vegan ALWAYS studies the subject of their own health and how to keep their body completely provided for in every sense. http://www.veganhealth.org/sh

To neglect their body is to define a plant-based diet as unhealthy and is the opposite of helping the animals.

Just to clear things up, the vegetarian/vegan diet is not composed of salads, vegetables, fruit and fake meat. Fruits and vegetables are always important but they DO NOT make up the largest portion of any healthy diet.

A balanced plant-based diet includes grains(breads, pasta, rice,cereal), legumes(soy, beans, peas, lentils), fruit and vegetables.

http://www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/vsk/f...

http://www.peta.org/accidentallyVegan/

http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/ea...

Being vegan can be an art, one whose challenge is to take things that involve the suffering of the innocent and change them into something free of cruelty.

A vegan woman can create an ENTIRELY NEW,HEALTHY HUMAN BEING INSIDE OF HER. Many of these children stay vegan and grow up to be perfectly healthy adults. So just keep yourself educated about what you eat and don't let anyone tell you that a veg diet is lacking anything essential.

Technically the term "vegetarian" does imply that you don't consume anything that comes from the body of an animal that requires killing it. Many ingredients such as gelatin and glycerin are found in many candies, Fig-Newtons, and many of other foods as well as rennet found in many cheeses.

http://www.happycow.net/health-animal-in...

The best thing to remember is to take your time so that for example: when you are comfortable not eating beef and pork you can then give up chicken when you are sure you can make the commitment permanently.

Depending on your age or reliance on parents or regional options, it may not be best to give yourself a label. The important thing is to do your best to make progress and be committed to your compassion towards animals. Never put your focus onto what you or other people use to describe yourself.

If you meet someone that talks down to people for eating meat, dairy, etc or to you because they think they are "more veg" than you, laugh in their face and tell them they are a disgrace to the entire philosophy. People like this only hurt the idea of veg*ism AND the animals. The point of all of this is to live compassionately and and as free from cruelty as you can, all the while maintaining your health and a positive attitude. People who don't maintain either, need not open their mouths and represent our beliefs.

If you actually choose to read all of this, I hope it helps. If not, feel free to e-mail me if you have questions.

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I'm trying to be vegan and these are some of my favorite things to eat:

Breakfast: bananas, cream of wheat with brown sugar and soy butter, cereal, pancakes or french toast with real maple syrup, vegan "sausage" patties, smoothies.

Snack: BRUSSEL SPROUTS =) no joke

Lunch: VEGAN "SAUSAGE" SANDWICHES, sandwiches with vegan deli slices(Tofurkey is the only one that's kinda funky), fruit, dinner leftovers, couscous salad, vegan sushi, potato or pasta salad.

Dinner: sloppy joes, "sausage" and gravy with homemade biscuits, Spaghetti and Trader Joe's "meatballs" or TVP, lasagna, Thai pad see ew, pad khi mao(drunkard's noodles), pad prig king, tofu+eggplant with basil sauce, yellow thai curry with tofu or vegan chikn and veggies and jasmine rice, Indian dal with homemade roti or dosai, channa masala, aloo gobi, vegetable or minestrone soup, pizza, STEAMED "PORK" BUNS with potstickers or spring rolls, sweet&sour/orange/lemon chikn, vegan pho or wonton soup, baked tofu, BBQ homemade seitan (tastes like BBQ'd ribs)

I use these sites to find recipes:

http://www.foodnetwork.com

http://vegweb.com

http://www.recipezaar.com

tofu doesn't cause cancer, just buy organic, non-gmo soy products.

edit: yeah, you can have chocolate. and if you want to be vegan you can still have chocolate, just have dark.

Answer 9

Always remember they cannot "force-feed" you on meat. It's against the Law! In my opinion, be direct and straighforward. Tell them what you think of animal cruelty and the unhealthy side-effects of meat-baed diet e.g. salmonella, colon/r****m cancer, cardiovascular disorders, etc. Tell them to prepare you a vegetarian meal at table. Offer to help your mother in the kitchen and learn some cooking. There are MILLIONS of recipes in the plant kingdom (I can share with you hundreds).

Always remember you're making a difference for hundreds of poor animals who could've been killed in your lifetime for your taste-buds. Make an educated choice. YOU'RE OLD ENOUGH to take your own decisions.

Answer 10

get information

present it to them

and then DO IT

it's your choice not theres

they can't rule your life forever

i'm 14 and i go down to the supermarket once a week and get my own food and cook it myself and i'm vegan

my parents don't like it, but s***w them... it's my life not theres

Answer 11

tell them the facts show them the videos show them we dont need meat so survive and you live healthier you tube is always helpfull on turning a person vegetarian

Answer 12

WOW I think Allison really said it all but I just wanted to through my support your way. I basically went through the same thing at your age with my parents. Unfortunately, I didn't really have the resources to back up my beliefs with facts and info, and I ended up eating animals until I moved out on my own. I'm 22 and my family is just getting used to it. You've obviously got the resources and you seem incredibly smart and determined, so I'm hoping and wishing things work out with your parents. Just continue to approach the subject, and don't let their beliefs overshadow yours. If they choose to be naive and believe animals don't suffer, try a different angle when discussing it with them.

If things don't work out now, of course it's never too late to convert. It's going to be wonderful for your body and the planet whenever you make the decision to go veg. And no, I don't think eating vegetarian specific products raises food costs compared to grody dead things.

Answer 13

If you were to eat an entire raw chicken, your parents would see how sick meat made you and then you are home free.

Beef, its what's for dinner!