My son is a vegetarian...?

[oscamaya]

So DS has always been a picky eater. It has taken me this long to realize that maybe he is a veggie. He will eat all the tater tots and not touch the chicken nuggets. He will eat all of the pasta and sauce, but pick out every single piece of ground beef. Forget any kind of lunch meat or hot dogs.

I thought that one would decide to become vegetarian for health or moral/ethical reasons, now I realize that maybe there are some people out there that just don't like the taste of meat.

So my question is what can I feed him as an alternative to meat? He is 2 so it is dangerous to exclude certain food groups from his diet while he is still growing so much. I can't keep offering him meat b/c he just won't eat it. So I need to find something else that could perhaps provide the same nutritional value....?

This is foreign territory to me. I come from a whole family of meat eaters (I mean c'mon, my sister is a butcher!) Not liking the taste of meat is just completely beyond my comprehension.

I know there are a lot of vegetarians here at HCW. Are your children also vegetarian? If so, what kind of foods are in their diets? Thanks.

[Jiji]

I have a 7 yo who would be a vegetarian if not for chicken. Even then, he will only eat it a few times a week. I give him lots of cheese and pasta and he will eat the occasional egg, so those forms of protein keep him going pretty strong.

If you are really worried, you could be sneaky and puree some meat and add it to the spaghetti sauce, so that when he picks out the ground beef, the pureed whatever is still there.

Does he like seafood? I know that ds was on a shrimp kick for a few months at one time a few years back. Just a thought.

[misse]

My 10 year old goes long stretches without eatting meat. He eats a lot of eggs, cheese, and ....TOFU. He loves tofu. He noticed it in his sweet and sour soup at the local chinese restaurant. Now I cook with it and substitute it for meat.

[extechy]

Will he eat beans?

I'm one of those people who just don't care for the texture of most meats, specifically beef and pork. But for health reasons, I eat beef. I'm looking for alternatives to meat, too. Seafood is good but watch the mercury content.

[CoffeeMom]

Will he eat beans? You can put them in just about anything - soft shell tacos, soup, or maybe try mixing them in with a sweet sauce so he'll like them better? Does he eat scrambled eggs? If he does maybe mixing them with cheese and a little extra milk would sneak in some protein. Good luck!

[MrsPinecone]

That's pretty common in toddlers.

Beans (kidney, garbanzo, black, edamame) are good.
Eggs
Cheese
Yogurt
Fish and seafood (DS likes calamari, salmon, sea bass, cod, etc)

[My3sons]

Peanut Butter
Hummus spread on pitas
Egg salad sandwiches
bean dip w/chips

[Nice1704]

Lentils (there are many different kinds) are a very good source of protein.

[SnickersDoodler]

My 6 y/o cousin is a vegetarian. Many people who have been vegetarians "their whole life" actually have a sensory processing issue, which is more common than most people believe it is. I'd spend some time researching it. I don't know much about it, so I am not in the position to offer advice on that.

Try to get him to eat meat substitutes. When I was a vegetarian, I used to eat products made by Quorn (pronounced like corn). Give the vegetarian chicken nuggets a try. Other good protein sources are peanut butter (and other nut "butters" - e.g. nutella, almond butter, cashew butter, hazelnut butter, macadamia nut butter, pecan butter, pistachio butter, and walnut butter), eggs, legumes, and dairy (or soy) products. Try preparing dishes incorporating these ingredients. If he drinks milk, try to get him to drink soy milk instead. It has great nutritional value and can taste fantastic.

[oscamaya]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. He eats some of this stuff already (but not much) so i will try out some of the other suggestions to see if I can get him to eat more. Right now most of his nutrition is coming from the fruit and carbohydrate groups (and he drinks milk).

I have not tried tofu so I definitely will. And I will try the beans and peanut butter again.

He just likes to make my life difficult when it comes to feeding time. He went through a phase where he would only eat out of baggies and i had to put all of his food in sandwich bags. When he was really little he would only eat if he was sitting in the laundry basket.

Maybe this is just a phase too.