Don't Have a Cow, Mom

And for an adolescent, who may be blowing off Mom's or Dad's advice because, well, they're Mom or Dad, the dietitian can provide objective outside guidance.

Dietitians like Tanner can also point to research -- including a 1991 study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition -- that should ease worries about healthy growth: That study, which involved 1,765 children ages 7 to 18 attending public schools and Seventh-day Adventist schools, found that the Adventist semi-vegetarian children (those consuming meat less than once a week) were taller on average than their meat-eating peers.

Even when nutritional concerns are overcome, there can be lingering social problems: Winters says her son Dean is teased occasionally -- called "vegetable boy" by other kids. Having come to vegetarianism as a high schooler, Ben Calman takes this in stride. "I get some ribbing, but there's so much ribbing anyway within my group of friends that we don't take that sort of thing too seriously," he says.

Like my daughter, Ben has many vegan and vegetarian friends. And the growing number of teenage vegetarians has changed peer pressures, according to Monika Relman, mother of Marina, 13, an eighth grader at the Washington International School. She speculates that about 10 percent or more of Marina's peers are vegetarian. The school recently started a vegetarian lunch option.

Marina's choice changed the family's dinner diet, which had consisted of chicken or meat plus a starch and a vegetable. "All of the sudden she was eating just the vegetable and the starch," remembers Monika Relman. "I am a nurse, so I knew we needed to do something different." She added beans, lentils, nuts and cheese to Marina's diet.

"There are occasions where we sit down and I look at the dining room table and there is very little for her to eat, but she just makes do and finds something in the fridge or makes herself a scrambled egg," says Relman. "I'm trying to be conscious of what she eats, but I still absent-mindedly ask if she wants a hot dog."

And Marina takes the credit for a bigger change: "My dad is really happy that I did it, because he claims that it's helped us all not eat as much meat."

The bottom line is that some families with vegetarian kids improve their diets. In our house, we've put aside meatloaf in favor of grilled salmon. In a 2002 survey of 4,746 Minnesota adolescents that was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, those who identified themselves as vegetarians were more likely than non-vegetarians to meet government standards for total fat, saturated fat, and fruit and vegetable consumption.

Which leads Tender to the conclusion many parents of vegetarians wished we had reached more quickly: "If your child comes to you and says they are going to be a vegetarian, I would say, 'That's fantastic.' " ·

Jennifer Nelson is a freelancer who lives in Florida. Comments:health@washpost.com.