Those of you who have been following me for a while, know that I have 4 teenager boys. Only one of them likes eating plantbased, the others absolutely not. One of those three is sixteen and boy oh boy is he sixteen! He behaves like he should at this age, we (his parents) say go left, he turns right, we want him to do homework, he thinks the playstation is a better idea, we offer him tea, he prefers a coke and of course we try to convince him to eat vegetables, but he insists on eating meat and lots of it. So a typical teenager with normal, healthy behavior.

But over the course of the last three weeks something has changed……To explain what exactly I need to go back in time a little:

We went to Israel with the whole family to celebrate my 50th birthday. As I wrote many times before vegan food is big in Israel. So I took my family to one of my favorite, completely vegan, restaurants in Tel Aviv. At first the boys were worried about the food they would have to eat there, they were definitely out of their comfort zone. I paid no attention to their complaints and told them that it was My Birthday so they just had to go with it!

The sixteen year old had the vegan shoarma and he was thrilled about how great it tasted! He also tried some of the salads that we ordered.

The rest of the holiday he ate a lot of fries and hamburgers and in the end he got fed up with it.

After returning home I read an article (posted by Forks over Knives) about a chubby boy being fed up with his body and the teasing. He started working out and a “sixpack” was his reward. Then the boy decided to go plant based and his body started to look even more tuned and better.

I showed this article to my son, who also prides himself with a good looking sixpack and a well-formed body.

To my surprise he commented after he read it:” Ok Mum, go ahead, make me a vegan“!!!! I asked him, just to make sure, if he was aware of the fact that getting vegan means eating vegetables… Yeah, yeah, he understood what it meant. He did check though if it also meant stopping eating candy and sweets. I advised him to take it one step at a time…..

You can imagine my joy. I decided to make his first vegan dinner an easy one so we had falafel night, to celebrate this major breakthrough. Falafel is something my entire family loves. I made couscous, spicy peppersauce, humus, the works. It was a lovely dinner.

I think that every parent knows that the most effective way to teach your children is leading by example, which is not always an easy task. But in this particular case we lead by example every single day without extra effort and it is starting to pay off! We are half way there, two down, two to go!!

Other than the fact that I am thankful that my child is changing his lifestyle to a more healthy one, it also has caused me new inspiration to keep on writing about plant based food! What you call a win-win situation!