When a child goes vegan, it can be a tense holiday recipe.
Risa Greene, 53, of New York City, says things get “tricky” every holiday season. “You have a child who is a garbage disposal and will eat whatever you put in front of him, and you have another child who is more restricted than TSA.
Green’s son is an omnivore – he eats. Her daughter Jessica is a vegetarian. She stopped eating meat in high school a few years ago, then gave up dairy and eggs at college and eventually gave up gluten.
This makes for a rather slender pick at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Greene wrote to The Salt: “The holidays have become less interesting, and more often I have learned what it is, and it is not clear what The texture is. Jessica’s “anxiety about eating during the holidays makes me nervous”.
She was joking, but only half joking. Anxiety is real.
This is especially true when members of the family are teenagers. According to a team at the university of Michigan mott children’s hospital to a new poll, more than half of all teenagers have special dietary habits of the parents – whether it is a vegetarian, vegan, ancient as well as no gluten, said this kind of transformation has become a conflict or stress.
Like Greene, parents often worry about their children’s nutrition and health. Or there could be trouble, because new diet on behalf of a day will influence the change of the whole family, especially for parents who cook, because they have to do the special food, researchers at the university of Michigan health behavior Sarah Clark said. Who carried out the poll?
“The worst thing is to have an extra burden around the food,” she says. “The perfect Thanksgiving dinner has a high-pressure situation, and the day-to-day exhaustion of another chore to take care of the family, and you’re making it harder.” ”
Clark says this can cause a negative or stressful situation, which in turn can lead to parents and children leaving each other. “All of these things are real, and may hinder the healthy relationship between teenagers and their parents,” she said.
Leslie Lytle, a nutritionist at chapel hill university in north Carolina and professor of health behavior, said parents realized that changes in diet were part of growing up.
“They’re trying to figure out who they are, mostly a good way to try new identities, but it does cause conflict,” she said. “It can be very challenging around holidays, because you can get a big family and they tend to challenge their kids’ diets.
Lytle says the solution to most conflicts is fairly simple, if not easy. “Parents should think of it as being together. “This is the strategy Lytle USES when her daughter decides to become a vegetarian.
“Because I’m too busy, she needs to be more involved in preparing the food she wants,” she said. “the burden is Shared.” “For a few nights, I just wanted to say, ‘please eat this. But it’s not worth arguing about, you don’t have to worry about what your kids eat every night as long as they’re healthy.
Lytle advises parents to deal with less-accepted relatives during the holiday season, saying: “don’t give her a bad time.” At the very least, until your vegans or vegans are adults, and they’ve come up with their own solutions.
Jessica Greene, 22, is just bringing her food to the holiday party. “It was awkward at first,” she said. “But I’d rather eat what I can eat.”
This year, she is helping her mother with Thanksgiving dinner. There would be turkeys, but they also planned some undisputed food. Risa Greene says, “I’m making simple sweet potatoes. Everyone can eat what they want and worry much less.
