AIBU to think that you cant really be a foodie if you're a vegetarian?

[MarmaladeTwatkins]

DH is a vegetarian and he would class himself as a "foodie". I can appreciate that he likes nice food but generally I think that being a food fanatic means that you will be able to try anything within reason.

Am I being unreasonable?!

Bubbles, was it the one in the Latin Quarter by any chance?

The biggest foodie I know is a vegan!

YABVVVVVVVU !

Marmalade - it was!

It's only since becoming a vegetarian I have learnt how to cook properly. It's really opened my eyes about food.

YABU! People can self-define any way they like, and there is plenty of lovely veggie food out there.

Ha! We went there when I was pregnant with DS. The man who owned it looked like Howard Moon from The Mighty Boosh.

Yabu and silly. Of course a vegetarian or vegan can be a 'foodie'.

You may not BU to make this claim about your husband. You know him, you know what he eats day to day, the rest of us don't. YAtotallyBU generalising it beyond him.

My experience of being vegetarian and then vegan is that I've had to be creative about what I eat - for example, my packed lunches can get pretty exotic, and I started making those because most standard canteen fare is out of bounds. (ok, there are other days when I wind up grating a carrot over some chickpeas because I didn't have time to shop, but is your every meal a gastronomic triumph?)

PS Waitrose does a vegetarian umami paste. Thanks for the reminder to buy more.

If you are vegetarian because you "don't like meat" then you can't really class yourself as an adventurous and dedicated eater.

If you are vegetarian because you "think it's wrong to eat animals" then it's a separate issue.

I never really know what 'foodie' means anyway - someone who likes food? - surely that's most people.

If you think vegetarian food is flavourless, then you aren't getting served very good vegetarian food. I imagine carnivores sometimes get a crap meal too.

It's possible you can't taste subtle flavours any more because your taste buds have become desensitised by all that chomping on dead things

Leave your poor DH alone and stop sticking hairy fish into everything you cook.

I'm a committed meat eater (and a committed vegetable-eater. Anything eater, really), and I think YABU.

It depends how you define 'foodie'. If you define it as somone who's prepared to shove anything in their gob, which is an extraordinarily blunt way to define it, then I suppose I can see how you got to your standpoint. To me that's just greedy, though. Not foodie.

To me, a 'foodie' is someone who undertand flavours, who experiments, who's creative, who understands food and can bring out the best in their ingredients. This is clearly isn't dependent on cooking with meat.

I made a veggie chilli for dinner tonight. It didn't occur to me to put a meat substitute in it. It was second-helping stuff, and lacked nothing.

I experiment way more with food now I'm a vegetarian than I ever did when I ate meat

As an aside, good, flavoursome, texture-filled vegetarian food usually requires a lot more ingredients that your average, bog-standard meat-based meal.

So, if anything, don't vegetarians need to be even more knowledgeable about ingredients, flavours, balance, nuance, etc, etc?

'generally I think that being a food fanatic means that you will be able to try anything within reason.'

That covers a number of children up to the age of three, and they also push the boundaries of acceptable edibles.
'Mud sandwiches? Slug delight? Try it, it might be delicious!'

Food fanatic/glutton?

To me a foodie is someone who really appreciates the quality of the ingredients and the preparation, can distinguish the various flavours and the balance within the meal. So by my definition, a vegetarian can easily be a foodie.
I've never thought of foodies as necessarily being ethical eaters, although many are. The self-gratification involved often marginalises production methods, conservation practices and ethics.

'For example, in Puglia this year, DH subsisted on margherita pizza because everything else contained rennet, fish etc . You can't call yourself a food fanatic if you can't eat anything in the gastronomic centre of Italy....'

I tend to stick to the dessert specialities of the region in that case. Chefs can specialise, why not foodies?

OrangeOpalFruit: Hens, being vegan is virtually an eating disorder so I'm not surprised they are obsessed with food. Most people with disordered eating are. I don't think that is the same as being a foodie, or maybe it is? It's all about exerting a high level of control over what you eat, but justified in different ways.

Is this the start of an international sustained campaign to redefine virtually akin to the one that has changed the meaning of literally?

Present definition of virtually, which I think is fine as it is. www.thefreedictionary.com/virtually

To me the term 'foodie' means someone who would be po-faced if you fed them a cheese and pickle sandwich. If you gave them exactly the same sandwich and told them the cheese was organic cheddar from a local farm thick cut onto artisan bread with some homemade pickle they would be very happy and spend a good ten minutes telling you how you could taste the quality of the ingredients.

Oh look! theveganfoodie.wordpress.com/

I was a 'foodie' before I was vegan, and I'm still a foodie. Interest in food doesn't suddenly disappear because your ethics change.
YABU

First, I am a vegan, and do not have an eating disorder so whoever said that should really go and educate themselves a bit before showing their ignorance all over the internet.

Op, YABU/YANBU - depends on your definition really. Obviously eating meat means you are able to experience a wider range of gastronomic experience.

On the other hand, as a vegan, you are forced to focus in on a narrower range of foods which kind if forces creativity. Plus I'm sure I have eaten things (delicious things!) that you haven't, tempeh, seitan etc
..

Penguins Don't be silly. If you ever let personal moral considerations get in the way of your stomach, you simply can't have a deep enough interest in food to qualify as a "foodie".

How did you not realise that foodies apparently only ever think about their taste-buds, and nothing else?

Tch.

Disagree I'm afraid. I am a foodie and I also do food reviews. Don't like meat and never have.

My whole family/culture are foodie, and historically veggie. They are obsessed with making, serving, tasting and discussing food, and have creative ways of giving food the flavours that come from meat and fish ingredients such as umami etc. they are also very creative about food, making noodles and pasta type foods from pulses and legumes and really understanding how to balance sweet/salt/spicy/sour flavour for instance.

Some of us do eat meat, but are maybe not the biggest foodies in the group, so IMO, YABU.

I would say you can't really be a foodie if you can't cook or appreciate food without relying on the same old boring taste of dead flesh.