Can Kids Be Healthy Without Meat?

April 18, 2009— -- When Bill and Jessica Baccus sit down to dinner, there may be meat on the table, but their 11-year-old son Elijah never eats it.

That's because Elijah, like many other American kids, has decided to become a vegetarian. His mom says he made the choice at only 3 years old.

"I had a big, local, organic chicken ... and he saw me cutting it, and it looked like a chicken," Jessica Baccus said. "And his little face crumbled. And he said, 'I thought chickens were our friends! I don't want to eat my friends!'"

Sarah Harlow, 7, has made the same decision -- for the same reason.

"I ask my mom, 'What is this animal?' and she tells me, and then I don't really want to eat it," Harlow said.

A recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control found that one out of every 200 American children younger than age 18 is a vegetarian. Like Sarah and Elijah, many of them are not from vegetarian families -- and that can set up a food war between parent and child.

For example, Alana McBane, 10, has wanted to stop eating meat for the past two years. But she is allergic to nuts, tofu and eggs, so her parents are unwilling to allow an all-vegetarian diet.

"It's really hard, because I don't want to [eat meat]," McBane said. "But my dad's like, 'No, you have all these allergies. You have to eat meat.'"

"The explanation is that, because she's in her growing years," said Alana's father, Scott McBane, "and we really do need protein during these years especially. ... It is really important, until she finishes growing, that she get good protein."