Rebuilding the pyramid Protein alternatives allow teen vegetarians to eat a healthy diet easily

KnoxNews.com - August 26, 2003

Caitlin Cotter, 17, and Deana Lane, 15, both lost their taste for meat about two years ago.

All three Knoxville teens are part of a growing segment of the population: teenage vegetarians.

Early this year, market research group Teenage Research Unlimited reported that 1-in-4 teenagers considers vegetarianism - once thought of as a fringe diet - "cool." Teenage girls appear more likely than boys to go vegetarian. The Baltimore-based Vegetarian Resource Group sponsored a poll that found 2 percent of teens ate no meat, poultry or fish in 2000, and 6 percent of teen girls ate no beef or pork.

Most gave varying degrees of moral and ethical reasons for their vegetarianism, over health reasons alone. Karta Purkh was raised vegetarian as part of her family's practice of the Sikh religion. Caitlin became vegetarian because of "environmentally destructive practices by the food industry." Deana simply doesn't like the thought of eating animals.

"I always felt kind of guilty every time I took a bite of meat," she said.

Is vegetarianism a healthy choice for teens? The American Dietetic Association, America's largest organization of nutrition professionals, says it can be. "Appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases," the ADA states on its Web site.

Those diseases include heart disease, cancer, Type II diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, gallbladder disease and hypertension. A vegetarian diet can be low in cholesterol and high in fiber.

But "appropriate planning" is key for teens and parents alike, say registered dietitians.

"Any diet, if it's balanced and has a variety of foods, can provide you with the nutrition you need," said registered dietitian Teresa McCusker, nutrition education coordinator for St. Mary's Health System. "Someone could eat just Twinkies and Coke, and they would technically be a vegetarian, but that wouldn't be healthy."

When she was in sixth grade, Caitlin gave up pork intending to gradually give up all meat. But it wasn't until she was 15 years old that the book "A Teen's Guide to Going Vegetarian" "convinced me" to give up meat completely, she said.

Her friends and family took a little more convincing. Although Caitlin knows other teenage vegetarians through the Unitarian Universalist Church, to which her family belongs, none of her "school friends" at Austin-East High School is vegetarian.

Nor are any of her immediate family members. Her 13-year-old sister, Caitlin said, "once chased me out of the house with a pound of raw ground chicken."

Her parents "kind of groaned a lot, but they were extremely helpful, extremely supportive," Caitlin said. "My dad makes vegetarian chili now instead of chili with beef in it. They shop for me, and sometimes they'll even eat some of the vegetarian food."

"My kids weren't big meat eaters, ever," said Mark Cotter, Caitlin's father. He monitors Caitlyn's protein intake but doesn't push her to eat meat.

"Some of that stuff tastes pretty good," Cotter said, listing non-meat "buffalo wings" and the Boca Burger as two of his favorites. "And it's convenience foods, too. You just pop them in the microwave."

St. Mary's McCusker, who has been a vegetarian herself but now eats fish, said many people worry unnecessarily about vegetarian diets being low in protein.

"Actually, most Americans get more protein than they need," she said.

Those who make meals of protein-rich foods such as peanut butter, beans and tofu can downsize their fat intake without sacrificing protein, McCusker said.

"Those are high-protein foods we encourage people to incorporate in their diets anyway, because they're lower in fat and they usually have more heart-healthy fats," she said.

Vegetarians who eat dairy products - eggs, cow's milk and cheese - will also get protein there, said Lee Murphy, registered dietitian for Knox County Health Department Nutrition Services.

But while meat contains "complete proteins," plant foods each contain different amino acids that must interact in order for the body to absorb plant protein, Murphy said. Eating a variety of plant foods throughout the day ensures one gets all of those amino acids, she said.

Vegetarian-friendly foods are more readily available now than when Kharta Purkh and her 21-year-old sister were growing up.

"We ate lots of tofu," Kharta Purkh said, laughing. "My mom knows how to cook it very well."

Now she enjoys soy-based meat substitutes as well as a newer product, Quorn, made from a fungi-based protein.

"It's so much easier now to make sure you have an adequate amount of protein in your diet," Dr. Rai Kaur Khalsa, a veterinarian, said. When she and her husband became vegetarians in the 1970s, she said, "there was tofu. That was it. And beans. Now there are scads of protein substitutes in the regular grocery store; you don't even have to go to the health-food store. And it's good-quality protein. Even going out to eat now, there's vegetarian alternatives on almost every menu."

As a child, Kharta Purkh never gave vegetarianism much thought. Part of a Sikh family who all wore turbans, she said, "We were so different anyway."

But she does remember children in her first-grade class teasing her, trying to get her to eat meat. Once, when she was very young, she sneaked a tiny sliver of lunchmeat, something she was "scared to death" to tell her mother, she remembers.

"I remember it being very, very red," she said. "It looked like a piece of plastic. I didn't put together that it was an animal; it was just something I couldn't have. It was like sneaking a piece of candy."

As she got older, Kharta Purkh said, she was never again tempted to eat meat, although she admits vegetarianism can be inconvenient.

"Sometimes when I'm with friends and we go to a restaurant, it seems like it would be so much easier, because you're always trying to figure out 'What can I eat?'" she said. "But there's always salad, and now it's getting even easier."

Her reasons for sticking to it now are clear to her.

"Mom saves animals," Kharta Purkh said. "Why am I going to eat them?"

She's sure she'll remain a vegetarian and raise her own children vegetarian.

"It's not a difficult thing to raise a child as a vegetarian," Rai Kaur Khalsa said. "When they first started going to school, they would take their lunch in a little Thermos. I always made sure they had a protein source, a yellow and a green vegetable and some ghee (non-meat fat) on their vegetables."

The girls are healthy, she said; both were dancers. Neither has ever even had an antibiotic, despite never being immunized.

Vegetarian teens need to make sure they get enough calcium, Murphy said, though if they're eating dairy products, that usually does the trick.

"Until the age of 30, we're adding on calcium to our bones," she said. "After that, the calcium we need is taken from our bloodstream, and if it's not there, our body starts leaching it from the bones."

Vitamin D, found in citrus fruits and leafy greens, improves the way calcium is absorbed, she said. Some soy milk and orange juice is fortified with calcium.

Vitamin C can help the body absorb iron from plants (called "nonheme"), which is not absorbed as easily as iron from meat ("heme"), Murphy said.

And Vitamin B-12, which is a co-factor in several of the body's processes involving the nervous system, is present only in animal products. Someone eating no meat or dairy needs to supplement with a pill or shot to get B-12, Murphy said, although she's quick to add: "You only need a little bit of B-12 to function. We're talking micrograms a day."

Juliann Chavez, registered dietitian for East Tennessee Children's Hospital, tells parents to make sure children's diet includes dairy or at least plant fats.

"Children are growing," she said. "They still need fat."

But most important, Chavez said, is making sure they consume enough calories to "fuel" their bodies' processes.

"If you're just getting your (nutrients) from vegetables, you need to eat a lot more, especially if you're a teenager," Murphy said. "You need 3,000 calories to grow and develop. You have to know your stuff and know how to get all that stuff in there."

Deana, who as a child ate less to avoid meat, is amazed at how easy it is now for her to eat large quantities of vegetables.

"It's like candy to vegetarians," she said. "It's nutty how you start to appreciate broccoli and carrots."

But those aren't always available to her, the Carter High student said, when she's at friends' houses, birthday parties or the school cafeteria.

"You're considered a nerd if you pack your lunch, so there's not a lot of options," Deana said. "Sometimes I don't eat anything (at school). Sometimes I eat french fries or chips and wait until I get home to eat something healthier."

Deana said family and friends have been good to her. If the family's going to Krystal, for example, they'll stop at Taco Bell so Deana can get a bean burrito.

"I'm not against other people eating meat," she said. "It just kind of sickens me personally. I guess I think about it a little more deeply."

Caitlin thinks girls are more likely to accept a vegetarian lifestyle. While her friends sometimes tease her, she said, her vegetarian ex-boyfriend had friends try to force-feed him meat.

Caitlin admits she once tried to "convert" everyone else she knew.

"When I first went vegetarian, it was a huge thing for me," she said. "I did all this research, and it was all I wanted to talk about, and I'd get mad at my friends when they ate meat in front of me. Now it's just my decision, and I just really like being vegetarian. Occasionally I still spout statistics at them."

Being vegetarian also entertains her, she said.

"I really love going to steakhouses with my friends, where I'm like, 'I'd like the chicken salad without the chicken,' and you get that weird look from the waiter," she said. "It amuses me. Sometimes at restaurants, I end up with mashed potatoes and french fries and asparagus, and that's my dinner. You have be a little creative, which is fun."

Though all three of these girls have multiple reasons for their vegetarian lifestyles, parents need to be aware of why a teen is choosing vegetarianism, the dietitians said.

A study published this year in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found vegetarian teens were more likely to be preoccupied with weight and at risk of an eating disorder, although teens who were stricter, long-term vegetarians did not have those tendencies.

"If you're going to give up a whole food group, that's going to decrease the amount of calories you consume," McCusker said. "There's a population that could fall prey to that."

The decision to be a vegetarian shouldn't be based on weight loss, she said. No teen should be obsessed with food.

"You just have to talk to the person and see where their mindset is," she said. "If it's a mature 13-year-old and she's got valid reasons and is eating enough, that's probably OK."

Kristi L. Nelson may be reached at 865-342-6434. She is health writer for the News Sentinel.

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