Your kid wants to go vegan. Should you let them?

Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary.

I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave.

I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond.

Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.

My child, age 9, has decided she’s vegan.

Neither of her parents are even vegetarian — we’re “free range chicken/grass fed beef” types.

She has learned about veganism from friends at school, and seems to have come to her position more or less on her own.

I want to encourage her ethical choices, but her mother and I agree that children should be introduced to new foods and flavors at this age.

She has no allergies or intolerances that we know of.

I worry that making accommodations for her dietary restriction may lead to a lifetime of picky eating, even if hers is a reasonable and ethical approach.

She seems to be uncomfortable when her mother or I cook meat for meals we share, even if we make her another option.

What should I do to support my daughter? Dear Hold the Beef, When I was around your daughter’s age, I went to Hawaii with my parents.

One night, we ate dinner on the beach, and we watched as a pig was dug up from an underground steam oven.

I was horrified to see its face and nose; most of the meat I had eaten so far in my life didn’t resemble the animal it came from.