BBC GOOD FOOD MAGAZINE: MAY 2006

Should my kids be veggie?

Life-long vegetarian Adharanand Finn has never eaten meat - and never wanted to. But as the father of two young girls, he wonders if they will want to follow his example

When I was born, in the early 1970s, my parents were hippies and didn't eat meat, so they decided to bring me up as a vegetarian. It must have been the natural thing to do, but fast-forward to the early 21st century and I'm a pretty unusual specimen in this country - a person who has never eaten meat. Believe it or not, I've never been tempted. Meat is quite simply repulsive to me. I don't hate all carnivores and, as someone who has not made a conscious decision to be vegetarian, I don't feel I can take the moral high ground on the issue. But no amount of juicy descriptions of meat - and many people have tried - has ever made me want to eat it.

Feeding my children

So should my partner Marietta, a vegetarian since her teens, and I bring up our children as vegetarians? My daughters - two-year-old Lila and two-month-old Uma - are still too young for it to be a big issue. At the moment Marietta prepares all Lila's food, so we haven't yet encountered problems with food at schools, nurseries or kids parties.

The more tricky question is whether they will stay vegetarian.If they choose to eat meat one day, that's fine by me - but we'd rather they didn't. My parents were successful, if that is the right word, in that neither I nor my two brothers ever wanted to eat meat. I had two school friends who, impressed by my 'exotic' packed lunches, decided to become vegetarian. However, their parents were reluctant to accommodate them and just cooked veggie burgers every day. Needless to say, my friends ended up eating meat again.

In our house it was different. My parents, with the opposite motivation, used to threaten to buy us fish and chips if we didn't eat our lentil bake. Nothing made us eat up quicker!

BOX

Deciding what to eat

Over the years, I've developed a personal definition of vegetarianism according to my own irrational meat-avoiding impulses. So, oysters are out. Smoky bacon crisps, even if they don't contain any smoky bacon, are out. Cheese is in, but eggs are out, except as a minor ingredient. When cooking for a vegetarian, I'd say avoid eggs, unless you're sure your guest eats them. In fact, avoid anything that you feel is borderline - vegetarians can be very fussy. If I turn up somewhere for dinner and the cook has forgotten that I'm vegetarian, I try to make as little fuss as possible. I accept that, for them, I'm the one being awkward. Despite the pitfalls of vegetarian life, there are few places as accommodating as Britain. I think the most difficult place I've ever been for vegetarian food is Spain. In one tapas bar in Andalucia, I read a menu with about 500 options and not one of them vegetarian.