Trouble with my vegan teen's stringent views

Question

My 16-year-old has been a vegan for two years now and I'm incredibly proud of him. I've eaten vegetarian and sometimes fully plant-based for the majority of my adult life. He is inspiring me to get back to being a vegan and his moral compass impresses me greatly.

That said, as the person who does most of the shopping and cooking, he's driving me crazy and we're getting into a lot of arguments over areas that one or the other of us is right or wrong about, and thanks to the good old internet, there's information to back up both of our leanings.

The main topics/ingredients of debate are:
Coconut/Coconut Milk (Monkeys exploited and abused)
Almonds and Butternut Squash (Bees exploited and abused)
Cane Sugar that is not specified to be organic (Could be filtered through bone char)
Maple Syrup (Could be processed through animal fat)
Natural Flavors (Could be derived from animal sources)

Now I can read a label with the best of them, but I'm also middle aged and need reading glasses now and so going through the store to find vegan things that don't have any of these ingredients
is starting to get really frustrating. Sometimes I'll miss something and he'll look over it with a fine tooth comb ( and yes, I have tried making him come with me and do all the reading, but he's an extremely socially anxious lad and wanted to leave after putting three things in the cart, assuring me that this would be plenty for him to eat for the week. So I have gone back to shopping without him for my own sanity.

I found a great vegan market recently but it's too pricey and far to be a regular thing. And I still found that 85% or more of the products had one or more of the above ingredients, so I started talking to one of the gentleman who worked there. He said as a 27 year vegan, the monkey thing is not a concern unless it's certain types of coconut water, and it's a very small percentage. He said the bees with almonds thing wasn't true and that all cane sugar is not filtered through bone char - not just organic. (Butternut squash and maple syrup are new ones so I didn't get a chance to ask him about that). And that all the products in their store are sourced to be 100% vegan so if it's sold there we can rest assured that the natural flavors are not animal derived. 

Great!  I happily delivered this news to my son, but he's still skeptical thanks to things he's read on Reddit and other sources of his choice.

Basically, his approach is to be suspicious of just about everything and if he can't 100% confirm that everything is cruelty free, he's not interested in putting it in his mouth. My approach is to get this boy to eat enough so his health isn't compromised (he's very thin, pale and sometimes complains of headaches) without ending up in an insane asylum. I thought maybe someone here would be able to point me to some reputable online sources that I could point him to so that we can continue on this vegan journey without such drastic limitations. 

Or maybe he's right and I'm wrong about these things. Enlighten me...

Thank you so much in advance!!

Jennifer

acsjJab · Answer

Shop online? And there's hardly ever a reason for natural flavors to contain non-vegan ingredients. For the most part the only non-vegan thing that's used for its taste is cheese, which you should only expect in foods that are openly cheese-flavored. Also they probably would state milk as an allergen in UK supermarket chain websites if it contains dairy.

https://foodisgood.com/are-natural-flavors-dairy-free/

MelissaHorsefeathers · Answer

Maybe instead of him focusing on foods he wont eat, focus on the foods he will eat. Identify the staples he needs in his diet and focus on those to start, then expand the list. (He's essentially doing an ethically-based elimination diet.) As someone else mentioned, buying online is helpful for the hard-to-find items. Also make sure he's taking plenty of vitamins. There are great vegan vitamin companies out there. Taking him to a vegan nutritionist would probably be very beneficial for him. Another thought is to have him start growing his own food. There is no better way to make sure food is truly vegan than growing it yourself. If he's going to be so militant about his diet, he needs to take charge and be proactive about it.

And my last thought, I've grown lots of squash and never enslaved bees to do it. There are tons of native pollinators who are more than happy to get the job done in the garden. If he's afraid to eat food pollinated by bees, he's in for a rude awakening when he finds out about 75% of our food crops are completely dependent on insect pollination.

LaurenPumpkin · Answer

Where do you both stand on him doing more cooking or baking? Because you have minimal control over a product on the shelf but if he did more from scratch he could really own it. Added benefit of it being less processed. 

Soups. Stir fry. Lentil chili's. Hummus and dips. Tofu. Anything potato. There are so many very easy things. And at that age it's an amazing life skill to start building ❤️

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