A few days ago, my granddaughter Molly made a confession while I was walking her home from school. Giving me an embarrassed look, she confided, ‘Grandma, I tried a chicken nugget yesterday!’
She’s 13, so you might think this is nothing special, but for me the news was seismic. Because Molly has been vegan since she was six, a decision my eldest daughter, Nicky, made that I don’t agree with at all.
I asked Molly what she thought of the first time she had meat in seven years (the only time she remembers) and she said it was “pretty nice.”
I had to hide my euphoric smile. I can’t say this openly, but I long for my grandchildren to give up their vegan diet, which is destroying our family and, I’m sure, damaging their health.
I have even deliberately tried to convince my grandchildren to eat meat, writes the anonymous contributor
I have even resorted to deliberately trying to convince them to eat meat.
Can you blame me? Watching their diet has become hell, especially since I pick up school and make their tea twice a week.
Nicky’s other son, Theo, has been vegan since he was born seven years ago and is now an outspoken mini-activist. If I take him to the supermarket, he will loudly refuse to go through “the dead animal aisle” when I need to buy meat.
I tried to tell him that it is normal to eat meat. The supermarket once offered free mini chicken bites tastings, and I tried to get him to eat some, but he wouldn’t have any.
Kids’ veganism isn’t limited to food: it extends to hair products, moisturizers, shoes, clothes, bags… you name it. The only exception to my daughter’s strict rules is that she will accept medications that contain animal products or have been tested on animals.
Sleepovers have been problematic for a long time, as I have to go through everything Molly and Theo eat and drink, and also take out the vegan soap and shampoo I keep in a cupboard for them.
I examine every label on food and toiletries, which is time-consuming and exhausting. But spending time with them is so important to me that I dare not refuse to continue with this talk.
If I ask Theo, ‘Do you want to try a sausage, I won’t tell Mom?’ He looks at me horrified and gives me a very firm ‘no’.
It would be easy to introduce some animal products into his diet to see if he would notice, but I didn’t dare break his trust. My goodness, though sometimes he is tempting.
I can’t even speak freely around him. If I ask the grown-ups who wants “normal” milk and who wants oat milk, when I’m making a round of coffees, Theo gets angry and scolds me: “Why do you say it’s “normal” when it’s from a cow? baby?
And it’s not just kids who stir up a storm in a cup of coffee.
When my husband Mike, a devoted carnivore, started grilling sausages and chicken at a family barbecue last weekend, the vegans in our group (Nicky, 37, our other daughter Maisie, 27, Molly and Theo) were excited. They complained loudly about the “dead” smell. animals cooking’ and they headed to the kitchen, closing the door behind them.
As always, I was stuck in the middle, contemplating the remains of our precious time together.
So how did our once quiet family become a conflicted and unpredictable battlefield? It all started in 2011 when Nicky was pregnant with Molly. She watched a TV documentary about animal welfare and went from roast beef lover to staunch vegan overnight.
We hoped it was just a phase, but when he came to our house with new-to-me pots and pans that “animals shouldn’t be cooked in” and demanded that I use them to prepare his food, I realized he was speaking in Serious.
As a doctor (I now teach obstetrics), I was concerned about her decision to go vegan from day one, mainly for health reasons.
When Molly was born, Nicky assured us that she would raise her on animal products and allow her to make her own decisions about veganism when she was older.
That said, I remember her telling the health visitor that even if she ran out of breast milk, nothing would convince her to use formula as it usually contains cow’s milk.
During pregnancy she had had low iron levels, which is a health risk often associated with veganism. I was worried that Molly would become anemic too, but when I mentioned it to Nicky she said, ‘She’s my baby!’
When Nicky gave birth to Theo, she was a single mother and decided she didn’t want the hassle and expense of preparing different meals.
He asked Molly, then six years old, ‘do you want to be a vegan like me?’ to which she Molly, not understanding anything about veganism, said: ‘Oh yes, please, Mum!’
That doesn’t seem fair to Molly, but every time I raise my concerns with Nicky, she just dismisses them.
Meanwhile, our youngest daughter, Maisie, decided a few years ago to go vegan.
We have always been a very close family and we never used to argue like we do now. I hate rowing, but I feel strongly that Nicky is making the wrong decision for his and his children’s health and Mike despairs that we have to please them.
Vegan food is also very expensive. As Maisie still lives at home with us, her vegan additions to the grocery store increase the bill by £20 a week, more if she runs out of toiletries.
Maisie also has a cat, who now insists he’s vegan, but I felt so guilty watching the poor thing salivate while eating a tuna sandwich recently that I secretly let him eat the crusts.
My son Daniel, 33, and his wife dismiss his sisters’ veganism as “nonsense” and feed their little one slices of tender steak.
Still, Molly’s recent confession has given me reason to hope. She knew I would support her choice and she went on to confess that she has been quietly introducing animal products into her diet, including cheese pizza. Fortunately, Nicky appreciates that Molly is at an age where she spends more time with her friends on the weekends, and that this makes it harder for her to be vegan when they eat ice cream and fried chicken.
She says her main concern remains the health implications, as vegans often have deficiencies in nutrients such as calcium, iron and vitamins A and B12.
My main concern for all of them remains the health implications, as vegans often have deficiencies in nutrients such as calcium, iron, and vitamins A and B12, as they can be difficult to obtain from a diet that does not contain animal products.
Over the years, Nicky had blood tests that revealed a vitamin B deficiency and has repeatedly suffered from problematic mouth ulcers. She now takes a vegan supplement and has consciously increased her consumption of leafy green vegetables like broccoli and spinach to boost her vitamin levels.
Meanwhile, Theo has always had an abnormally high number of colds, which Mike tells Nicky is because he is vegan, a comment that causes major disputes between them.
I’m also worried that when Molly starts having her periods and her iron levels fluctuate more, she may be deficient.
For me, the biggest frustration is getting stuck in the middle. Even going out for coffee with my daughters is a minefield because vegan alternatives like oat milk are not offered everywhere.
We’ve been to cafes, restaurants and tea rooms where we sat, read the menu and then had to get up and leave when the vegans started complaining.
Of course, I support all my children and grandchildren in the decisions they make and I love them very much. But I long for the days before veganism loomed as a disturbing relative, when family life was simple and everyone fought good-naturedly over the last slice of roast beef on a Sunday.
Names have been changed.
As told to Sadie Nicholas
