Dear Sue,

My teenage son has decided to become a vegetarian. I am in a fix and am wondering how to handle it. The rest of the family eats meat, and I don't want to fix two different dinners every night. Do you have any reasons, nutritional or health-related, why it's not good for him? I want to encourage him to give up on this new idea.

Before hastily trying to foil the idea, you may want to look at some of the merits of vegetarian eating and at some of the merits of your son's making an independent decision about his life, especially one that can be as healthy as adopting a vegetarian diet. Did you know that vegetarians are generally at lower risk than non-vegetarians for heart disease, high blood pressure, some forms of cancer and obesity? As long as you serve, and your son eats, a variety of foods in a balanced diet, going vegetarian should be easy for him, even without any work on your part. When you are serving meat, he can substitute tofu, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt or peanut butter, or any other number of vegetarian sources of protein.

You may even want to support his decision on occasion and try fixing a vegetarian meal for the whole family. Even something as simple as pasta with meatless tomato sauce can be a great compromise that's good for the whole family. For some help and empathy, buy a copy of Vegetables Rock! A Complete Guide for Teenage Vegetarians by Stephanie Pierson. She is a mother of two who went through the experience of raising a vegetarian teen, and her book covers the emotional and nutritional challenges of doing so.

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