Children and the Vegetarian Diet- is this safe?

About Lillie I am a 12-year-old seventh grader at Boulder Country Day School in Boulder, CO. I’ve played sports all my life, but my absolute favorite is soccer. I am very serious about it, and about the training, fitness, ball skills and speed necessary to perform well. But I realized soccer alone wasn’t enough to keep me healthy and that my love for McDonald’s cheeseburgers, french fries and other junk food didn’t make for a diet that would fuel a peak performance on or off the field. So on August 5, 2005, I became a vegetarian. Health wasn’t my only reason for changing my diet, though! I also hated that animals were being slaughtered to provide my dinner. I wanted to make a difference, and to do so I had to change my ways. This brings me to my capstone project. At our school in seventh grade, we choose a topic outside of the normal classroom curriculum to study for two years. A capstone project can be about anything you find interesting and want to learn more about. For me it was being a vegetarian. I am looking forward to learning about the advantages and disadvantages of vegetarianism. I want to learn how a vegetarian diet can impact hunger, the environment and economies around the world along with my own health and athletic performance. I will be writing a series of articles and sharing what I learn on this website. Thank you for helping, Vegetarian Times, and a special thanks goes to my teacher and guide for this project, Jaime Ogden. What’s the big deal about protein anyway? Well, it turns out that protein is key to the healthy growth and development of the human body. In fact, next to water, proteins are the most abundant substances in your body. Every system in the body depends on adequate amounts of protein. Proteins have many different jobs. Structural proteins are the building blocks for most of your body tissues, including blood, hair, skin and muscle. Some proteins are hormones, like human growth hormone, which controls your body’s growth and sexual development. Others are enzymes that do the work inside your cells like breaking down food to release energy, and still other proteins work as transport that carries nutrients to different parts of your body when they are needed. For example, hemoglobin in red blood cells carries oxygen throughout the body. Even antibodies, essential for fighting viruses and bacteria, are proteins. So obviously proteins are pretty important. All of this information may make it seem like you have to eat a lot of protein to be healthy, but that is not actually true. Proteins are made of smaller units called amino acids. There are 22 amino acids in all, but only nine must come from your diet; the rest your body can make. These nine amino acids are called essential amino acids, and they are methionine, threonine, tryptophan, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, valine, phenylalanine, and histidine. Foods that contain all nine of these are called complete proteins, but if a food is missing one or more essential amino acids it is called an incomplete protein. Meat and dairy products are complete proteins, while most vegetables and grains are incomplete proteins. However, if you mix and match your vegetarian options, it is very easy to create and eat complete protein meals. For example, beans eaten with rice, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread, are examples of vegetarian meals that provide complete protein. One of the first questions I was asked when I became a vegetarian was, “Will you get enough protein?” Of course my answer was yes! But how much protein is enough? The National Research Council recommends that adults eat an average of 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight every day. They say an average female 11 to 14 years of age weighing 101 pounds should eat 46 grams of protein a day, or 0.46 grams per pound. The actual amount will change with your body size and daily activity. At my weight of 80 pounds, the calculated daily protein requirement is about 36 grams per day. Eating 36 grams of protein a day is a piece of cake. For example, one whole-grain bagel has 10 grams of protein, 1 ounce of cream cheese has 2.1 grams of protein, and 1 cup of 2% milk has 8.1 grams of protein. So in one quick breakfast I can eat 20.2 grams of protein—more than half of my daily requirement. Other great sources of protein for me are rice, beans, pasta, peanut butter and bread. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with Great Harvest whole-wheat bread and 2 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter has 15 grams of protein. One cup of vanilla yogurt with 1/3 cup of granola has 13 grams of protein. A 1-cup serving of beans and rice has 10 grams of protein, and I like to add 1 ounce of cheddar cheese for an extra 7 grams of protein. Even fruits and vegetables have some protein. If you or your parents are still concerned about your protein intake on a vegetarian diet, there are some common signs of protein deficiency to look for, including fatigue, depression, weakness and the inability to fight off colds and infection. In extreme cases of protein malnutrition you might see hair loss, swelling of your joints and muscle weakness. However, some recent studies show that many Americans may even be getting too much protein. Diets that are too high in protein can lead to a loss in calcium, which can contribute to a decrease in bone density, or osteoporosis. This is a very dangerous condition, particularly for older women in our country. Maybe we should be less concerned about not eating enough protein and more concerned about eating too much. In my next article, I would like to look at the impacts of the overconsumption of protein from an environmental perspective as well as a personal health perspective. To find out more information on the vegetarian diet and to look up some cool vegetarian recipes try out: http://www.vegetariantimes.com/