If you're vegetarian are you bothered by any of these?

[Knitwit99]

I don't eat meat but I do eat animal in other things so I don't count myself as vegetarian. If I can easily avoid meat I do, I would pick the veggie Percy Pigs if they were right beside the gelatine ones, but if someone offered me a Percy Pig I would just eat it without bothering to check. That tiny amount of gelatine would not bother me at all.

DS14 is vegetarian and the opposite extreme.

If you consider yourself to be vegetarian do you eat-

Non-vegetarian marshmallows and sweets containing gelatine

Chips from the chip shop cooked in beef fat

Deep fried food eg mozzarella sticks that are fried in the same vegetable oil as meat products like chicken nuggets

A veggie pie cooked on the same tray as a meat pie

A veggie pie that has been cooked in the oven underneath a meat pie on a metal baking tray

A veggie pie that has been anywhere in the same oven as a meat pie

A veggie pie that has been carried home in the same shopping bag as a meat pie (each pie cold and wrapped in a separate paper bag)

I've had mixed responses from people irl. One lifelong vegetarian said he doesn't care if a chip shop cooks its chips in beef fat or not because any animal dna has been fried into oblivion. I was really surprised by that.

Another who used to have a massive bag of haribo in her drawer at work, she figured the animals were dead anyway so she might as well save their gelatine from going to waste.

DS will absolutely not eat anything with any animal by-product in and ties himself in knots trying to avoid any meat being anywhere near his veg. Eating out is difficult because he can't be sure his vegetarian food hasn't been cooked right beside meat.

To my mind a small splash of animal fat on my food is not going to matter but I guess to him it really matters. I'm curious about where other people are on the spectrum.

This is not about me trying to persuade him to think differently, I'm just genuinely curious. I do also think he gives himself a whole lot more stress than he needs to but maybe not. I respect his choices (mostly, I think the chances of meat juice dripping through a solid metal tray onto his food are pretty low and don't have much patience with that one)

@HappyNewYear2021

I when i read this Me, I've been vegetarian for over 30 years, since being a child. I'd not knowingly ingest any dead animal. So no gelatine.

Does this individual eat live animals then so much emotive language

When ds1 was 3 we went for dinner with a veggie friend. Ds offered her a pork dumpling and she answered ‘I don’t eat dead animals’.

I saw ds’ eyes widen like saucers and butted in ‘she doesn’t eat them alive either’. He was a very disappointed little boy.

Oh that's really sad, poor person. Yeah I only have vague recollections of it and probably magnified it because I was a kid.

Oh that's really sad, poor person. Yeah I only have vague recollections of it and probably magnified it because I was a kid

I don't know, both things were pretty grim as an adult too. Although the BSE thing was dreadful. Particularly as the patient didn't often eat meat much but she had eaten a takeout burger, so it was really desperately bad luck.

Where do you all live with chip shops cooking in vegetable oil? Everywhere I go seems to use dripping.

Oh god that's terrible. Poor person. I was actually terrified of it as a child even though I was veggie.

@bellagogosdead

Where do you all live with chip shops cooking in vegetable oil? Everywhere I go seems to use dripping.

Same. Our nearest veggie friendly one is a 25 minute drive.

Not a hard and fast rule but I think places in the south are more likely to use vegetable oil and in the north it’s beef dripping. Where I live there is a large Asian population many of whom would avoid beef as well so might also depend on local demographics.

I live in a town centre. There are about 5 chip shops. It happens that the closest is run by a Muslim family and uses no animal fat in frying. The two often seem to go hand in hand. It was the same in the next nearest town. However, Stonehaven has an award-winning traditional chip shop (not like mine with an Indian restaurant in the same building) and they use veg oil too.

Hebden Bridge used to have a veg oil using one but it wasn't popular. I think it's an optician now

@PattyPan

Not a hard and fast rule but I think places in the south are more likely to use vegetable oil and in the north it’s beef dripping. Where I live there is a large Asian population many of whom would avoid beef as well so might also depend on local demographics.

I have always lived in the north east and the chip shop in the small semi rural town I grew up (and where my parents still live) have advertised for years how they only use vegetable oil. But I think that is precisely because most places do use beef dripping so there is probably an element of truth in what you're saying.

@bellagogosdead

Where do you all live with chip shops cooking in vegetable oil? Everywhere I go seems to use dripping.

Multi cultural town. If they used beef dripping a massive portion people wouldn't go there.

However if anyone knows if Colmans chips in South Shields are cooked in vegetable oil then please let me know. I have a feeling they aren't though.

I hadn't even considered if fish and chips are fried in the same oil, I assume they probably are. And the mince pies and everything else you can get deep fried up here. I wonder if ds has thought about it.

Thanks for all your views, it's been interesting reading them.

I am not in any way trying to change his mind, he's just at the strictest end of the scale of vegetarians I've come across. But like many of you have said, he might relax a bit in time. And feeding him will become less my responsibility and more his so it won't matter to me one way or the other.

Nearest place to me is about 25 miles or 3hrs by train! It would be quicker to go to London.
I have always believed it was a north/ south thing. But was gutted to find chip shops on the Suffolk coast boasting about cooking in dripping.

This is fascinating, my veggie friends were all only worried about reducing demand for meat.

So pie trays and orders and using the same fat wouldn't bother them at all. At uni we quite often used to do e.g. a sausage pasta bake with a veggie sausage corner in the same pyrex. Obviously I'm aware that's unusual but it does make me quite relaxed about utensils etc.

Not vegi but I don’t eat a lot of meat due to food intolerances

No way could I eat mozzarella sticks or chips cooked in animal fat it would make me very ill.

I’m in the NW, do chip shops really still cook chips in lard? If they advertise this then surely they alienate a lot of people not just vegetarians?

Last time I had lard cooked chips was 30 years ago in the ROI when I discovered my animal fat intolerance

I wouldn’t eat veggie food cooked in animal fat or cooked in the same dishes (at the same time) as a meat dish, but I don’t care if they share an oven or a carrier bag.

Veggies are just light weight vegans.

I have to admit, I have more respect for vegans, as they really are taking it seriously.

I’m a vegetarian and more like you. I don’t ask in the chip shop about the oil but if they told me it was beef fat I would go elsewhere. Same with sweets - if I was aware there was gelatine in them I wouldn’t eat them but if someone offered me one I wouldn’t check. But when I was a teen I was much more strict.

Generally I try not to be fussy and annoying, but I'm not keen if the meat flavours contaminate the food. So I'd prefer not to have things fried in beef fat, etc. I've been a bit grossed out when a friend was barbecuing and used the same tongs for the meat and veggie burgers - I wouldn't normally have minded but these were home made beef burgers where bits of the ground mince were coming off and sticking to the veggie burgers. Bleargh. I try not to eat pork gelatin, but wouldn't be squeamish about it.