Fattening up a 5 year old

Since Junior’s cold a few weeks’ ago, I’ve noticed that she’s lost a bit of weight. Hardly surprising really as I’m the same, can’t and don’t want to eat when my nose is running and I can’t breathe I’m trying to ‘fatten’ her up again but she has been quite resistant to my attempts to get her to eat more. However I seem to have found the solution. Vitamins. She hates taking her vitamins but I’ve told her it’s a choice between eating up all her food or taking her vitamins. It may backfire on me because junior being the cunning little madam she is has started looking at her meals and then saying “I don’t think I like this, I’ll just have vitamins instead.” The child’s too smart for her own good. I have however managed to get her to eat a baked potato with beans, something she has not done for years, and last night she had mushrooms on toast and actually ate all the mushrooms which was pleasantly shocking. Tonight I’m thinking tofu and peppers with something else so I’m not sure if I’ll be as successful at getting her to clear her plate. Trouble with junior is that she is so changeable. The other week she saw me eating some smoked tofu, just slicing it off the block and having it, and she decided she’d try some too. She then proceeded to devour about a third of the block which obviously I was very pleased about. Couple of days later however and she’s back to the old “I don’t like tofu” routine.
She’s developed a fondness for popcorn recently which she must get from Sean because I find the stuff not only disgusting but pretty pointless as well. I used to hate going to the cinema and having to smell buckets of the stuff being consumed around me. However, being the good mummy I am, I’ve promised madam that we’ll make some so I’ll guess I’ll just have to disarm my gag reflex! I’m thinking of just putting margarine and cinnamon on as junior has developed quite a fondness for cinnamon, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Following on from my rant on the previous thread, there is something else which has been annoying me lately. I’ve found that when people discover you’re a vegan they seem to think it is their responsibility, or even their right, to try and rubbish your diet and way of thinking. When I find out people eat meat I don’t launch into a full scale attack of their eating habits and what it’s doing to their bodies but they seem to feel it is perfectly acceptable to do that to me just because I’m vegan. Why this need to try and ‘prove’ my diet is at fault? Is it because they are so unsure of their own diet or because they view me as some sort of anomaly? The fact that junior is a vegan as well usually causes gasps of horror although they only have to look at her to see that she’s hardly suffering from it! I wouldn’t attack someone for their religion, or for their political beliefs so why do some people feel free to attack veganism which I hold as strongly as others hold their beliefs. Worst of all are the self appointed ‘experts’ who come out with spurious facts pertaining to the damage a vegan diet can do to a growing child and how we all need meat to survive. Just because they can’t get their tiny little brains around any alternative to ‘meat and two veg’ doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of people out there who can and do manage this every day and live healthy lives free from animal products and suffering.