Food orders for work related events are to be vegan and vegetarian only

Cheese is a no go, it turns out, carbon-wise. So it's just eggs and... what do the vegans get? Chickpeas grown using a lot of water intensity, and flown in, to make hummus?

Also - it's not just meat
Eggs, cheese, butter, milk...
There's much more that has to be cut out or changed for vegan diets

Do you not eat fruit and vegetables?

Yeah, if we get pizza at work it's the meat ones that go first and the vegan left until last. Obviously we try to order a bit generously on the veggie as we know meat eaters will go for both, but it's clear people like their pepperoni and I wouldn't want to be the person refusing to order it. In carbon terms it's quite different from everyone eating a steak, too. That logic of using meat almost as a seasoning.

My work is the same, and has been for a long time, I think it is common

Which is weird because in my experience it is always the vegetarian/vegan options that get eaten first often leaving the vegetarian/vegans with nothing to eat 😂

Bullied. 😬

Of course chickpeas and lentils are famously grown in the UK.

Not that there is anything wrong with eating these things, I certainly do. But I really hate corporate greenwashing.

As an omnivore who prefers non UPF I would be very happy with egg, cheese, cream cheese, hummus, nut butter, etc sandwiches.

Bean and pulse based salads.

Veg samosas etc

What’s wrong with that?

It’s one meal in the week. Provided free.

No almond milk either

Why not? If they were before ordering olive oil oranges oranges and meat and they are now ordering oil oranges and non-meat the carbon footprint is still lower.

I agree and it’s the odd occasion so won’t hurt anyone not to eat meat - might be a positive for health and wellbeing.

Oh dear. Looks like cheese, chocolate and coffee are definitely of the menu as well. Because carbon...

given it will be vegetarian or vegan and not just vegan there is nothing ruling out an egg mayo sandwich being offered

I think it depends what good is then offered.

I don't eat a great deal of processed food, as others have mentioned a lot of vegan food is processed.

If they had said "only locally sourced organic produce" I'd have had much more respect for them TBH.

Bullied? 😂😂😂

Depends how much fake meat and cheese there was involved.

Livid would mean I would express my discontent at the absolute crap food being served, as would everyone else where I work if it was lab-grown ultra processed shite.

So it's totally fair to expect people to provide their own?

Something which was Unfair when it was for allergies or vegan diets before?

For fairness, options should be available for carnivores, vegetarians and vegans

I'd be annoyed at this. As others have said the carbon reason is a bit weak. It feels like an excuse given by a veggie who wants to impose their views. One of the main arguments against people who get huffy about veggies is 'It doesn't affect you; let them eat what they want'.

A lot of protein heavy vegan stuff nowadays is very processed. I'd rather save my processed food eating for stuff that I actually like eating.

It's different from eating veggie at a vegetarian's house for example because the workplace should be representing everyone. That's the wrong word, but you know what I mean.

And I say this as someone who cooks plenty of nice veggie food and does her best to buy free range chicken etc.

In my experience this does not reduce waste at all (at one point I was ordering the lunches for some meetings myself).This was imposed at my workplace a while ago too and there is a lot that goes to waste at the end of meetings as some people don't really enjoy the vegan options so they hardly eat anything on offer and it gets wasted. There was much less waste when not only vegetarian/vegan options.

Yes it is. Look at Our World in Data and it will tell you. With a few exceptions, locally sourced meat has a much higher carbon footprint than vegetables from far away.

For those people saying the reasoning isn't logical due to the impact of food miles to carbon footprints, I suggest reading the book "How bad are bananas?" by Mike Berners Lee. It's a complete fallacy that "all vegan foods have high food miles". It's also a fallacy that shipping food around the world is worse than eating locally sourced meat. Beef and lamb in particular have really high climate change impact because they are ruminants, so produce a lot of methane. 1kg of beef has a footprint of 99.5kg carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). 1kg eggs has a CO2e of 1.6 kg. Chickpeas is 0.4 kg CO2e.

If you aren't flying the food around, the added footprint of transport by boat is relatively small. Bear in mind that it's unlikely that the corporate lunch was previously organically grown meat from a farm literally down the road, so it's not as if the food miles would have been low anyway.

That's what I would be doing, were I being bullied like this at work, the smellier the better too!

Other sources are available:

https://www.climateq.co.uk/resources/the-carbon-footprint-of-food/

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/04/11/a-different-way-to-measure-the-climate-impact-of-food#

https://www.healabel.com/carbon-footprints-of-food-list/

Or when pizza is ordered it is always the veggie pizza that gets eaten first.