A child can have a perfectly healthy vegetarian diet as long as a few key elements are in place. Protein is vital at most meals for a growing child. Good alternatives to meat and fish include soya-based food (tofu or soya milk or soya burgers); Quorn and Quorn products; pulses (lentils, baked beans, chickpeas); seeds and nuts. Eggs are an excellent source of protein.
It is important to eat calcium-rich foods several times a day to ensure optimum bone growth. Children need three or four portions of dairy-based food a day. A glass of milk, a yoghurt and some cheese in a sandwich would fulfil his or her daily needs; a hefty serving of milk with cereal, a milk-based smoothie and a yoghurt would also suffice.
If your child has given up dairy products, calcium-enriched soya or oat milk, desserts made from soya or oat milk, custard and rice puddings, tofu, bread, apricots, almonds, sesame seeds and green vegetables are all good alternatives.
Iron is also vital for young people. It is needed to transport oxygen around the body; a deficiency can lead to tiredness, depression and poor academic performance. Many teenage girls — even the omnivorous ones — lack iron in their diets, but vegetarians have to be particularly vigilant because the mineral is harder to absorb from plant sources.
Some of the best sources are wholegrain cereals, fortified breakfast cereals, cashew nuts, sunflower seeds, pulses such as baked beans and green vegetables such as dark green cabbage and broccoli.
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Some foods and drinks can hamper the body’s ability to absorb iron, while others can improve it. If I had a teenage daughter who announced that she was switching to a vegetarian diet, I would make her aware that tannins in tea and polyphenols in tea, coffee and chocolate all reduce iron absorption and shouldn’t be consumed at the same time as iron-rich foods.
Citrus fruits, peppers and green vegetables and drinks such as orange juice contain vitamin C, a nutrient that can dramatically enhance our ability to absorb iron, so I would recommend eating them at the same time as iron-rich foods — a glass of orange juice with a fortified cereal for breakfast, for example.
The other crucially important foods are those providing vitamins B2, B12 and D. Regularly ensuring that breakfast cereals fortified with B2 and B12 are eaten and that soya foods and yeast extracts such as Marmite are also meal-time regulars should ensure that children and teenagers receive enough of these vitamins, which are crucial for healthy nerves.
As for vitamin D, which the body needs to absorb calcium, most children older than 4 should get enough through daily exposure to sunlight (before this stage they will need to have seven micrograms a day from food). Children and teenagers who don’t should regularly have breakfast cereals and spreads fortified with this vitamin, or a daily supplement of vitamin D.
For further information, the Vegetarian Society website, vegsoc.org, is useful.