AIBU - vegan dinner party guest EATING FISH

[isitginoclock]

We're throwing a dinner party. I've just excused myself to the loo to write this because I'm FUMING!! One of our guests has recently become a vegan. I spent bloody ages making her a mushroom pate for starter which she happily tucked into whilst we ate our salmon tartare. She then asked if she could try some salmon.

Wtf?!?!

I've bought loads of different stuff for her to eat and spent all frigging day cooking it. Why do I bother?!

Hardcore, Rhonda? Hardly - but here's a Mumsnetting gym bunny who is proper hardcore!

Of course you don't need a label to eat a normal omnivorous diet more typical of the days before factory farming when meat was too expensive for people to eat it in quantities that they do today.

We wouldn't be having this argument if we hadn't made meat a relatively cheap mass produced food stuff that most people could afford to eat it in relatively large quantities daily.

Its hard buying decent meat the supermarket meat is injected with water to make it heavier. If you buy quality meat then its more expensive and tiny portions. Half the time I'm not surprised that people would rather be vegan or vegaterian.

limitedperiod, this thread is making me think so and cringe. I honestly never told anyone I was vegan though, they just assumed I'd turned vegan because I'd made since comments about having made a vegan birthday cake for DS2 (due to his allergies) and I'd made some vegan food when they came to us (to cater for said allergies and me not eating meat, even though I do eat fish). They put two and two together, came up with five and I felt very guilty at all the needless effort they'd made....

Good grief. I remember having to cater very last minute at christmas for a "vegan". A vegan who eats bacon and galaxy milk chocolate? And here was me worrying sbout the honey on the parsnips.... So yes, pretend vegans, cant stand it. Just an excuse to be awkward about peoples cooking i think

Limited I wish I could he will talk more then. I'm half deaf so I know how to block my ear.

This reminds me of a flatmate from years ago who was a particularly vociferous and frankly aggressive vegetarian. He was also a terrible cook and like cooking in the middle of the night. He refused to use any saucepans that had had dead animals in them. Fair enough, until I caught him frying up a shed load of prawns (in his special animal free pan), saying that it was ok, they're just sea vegetables

Also a not so militant but strict vegetarian pal of the same era (mid 80s) who tucked happily into a prawn curry on the basis that prawns have no central nervous system so don't count.

I feel sorry for the prawns.

i did this, a long time ago, at a wedding, i was a vegetarian to be fair, and to eat fish was easier for catering.
the mother of the groom, my relative, gave me an annoyed face when I piped up that it had been me who had eaten the salmon starter.
I dont think she has forgiven me, 25 years later

but op, yanbu

No, you are not bring unreasonable - this is the sort of person who gives vegan and vegetarian dietary choices a bad name. There ought to be an etiquette around this. I have been, in the past, vegan and vegetarian and always regarded it as my responsibility to let my host/hostess know what I did and didn't eat, 'though always making clear that I could usually work around what others were having. Now, so many people put the onus on the hostess/host to play an absurd guessing game as to what the latest dietary choice is. One of my friends recently told me she had gone gluten and dairy free for health reasons, and I spent ages preparing a buffet lunch with clear gluten free choices and guess what? Yes, she tucked into loads of bread and cheese and ignored all the gluten free stuff. I was spitting tacks, and now don't bother unless someone tells me they are actually coeliac, in which case it really is a big deal that people don't eat Gluten.

my cousins husband has started calling himself vegan as an easy way to say that hes given up (most) meat and dairy, but he does still eat fish, but hes obviously not a vegan. It doesnt annoy me though as I can see its an easy way of saying you dont eat dairy

I've seen someone mention vegetarians cooking meet for guests that eat meat and they were shut down straight away.
What if they can't eat fruit or vegetables? I'd like a reply from vegetarians preferably. If you had a dinner guest who can't eat fish, fruit and vegetables would you cook meat?

bubble

I'm vegetarian and no, I wouldn't cook meat for anyone.

I would be very surprised to meet someone who was physically unable to eat fish, fruit or vegetables. That would be a very unusual set of allergies to have.

But as there are carbohydrates, lentils, pulses, dairy and soya products, I think I would be able to make something for them somehow

I'd cook toast

Lentils on toast

Frankly, I don't think it's a big deal. Yes, you went to lots of trouble with the starter, but probably the guest didn't intend to eat fish and was simply overly tempted because yours looked so tasty. It's easy to slip up when you try to become either vegetarian or vegan (it was bacon sandwiches that used to break me!). It's not like she seduced your husband or anything .. let it go.

glass

And yet, she was quite happy to eat fish. (Oh, 'only once a week' mind which is apparently ok!)

I have argued that it is more moral to eat beef than fish because a fish will only feed one (unless it is tuna) but a cow will feed a family for a week or more.

SuburbanRhonda

My SIL can't have fruit, veg or fish and is lactose intolerant

Uh yeah sorry but just going to call out the poster who mentioned diabetes and emergency sweets. That is absolutely the correct procedure for a diabetic to follow, and an emergency twin bar can mean the difference between going into a diabetic coma and being alright. So maybe educate yourself a little bit. If anyone ever tells you they're diabetic and they need some sweets ASAP then it is a medical emergency and you need to be aware of that.

And a person with type 1 diabetes can eat sugary foods the same as everyone else, they just have to take insulin to process it.

Sigh, twix bar* (obviously) although happily twin bar is factually correct as well, at least in the case of a standard twix...

My SIL can't have fruit, veg or fish and is lactose intolerant

Is she allergic to all fruit, all vegetables and fish as well?

The cow will have suffered much more than the fish

How are you quantifying the various harms caused by eating creatures Sashh?
Suffering, economic efficiency, environmental damage, harm to health of the person consuming the flesh?

But fish are left on the floor of the fishing boat to asphyxiate. Surely that is more cruel than stunning and slaughtering?

(not that I care as I eat neither).

I hope she made sure that she told everyone that she was vegan before she tried the salmon.

Rule no. 1 of being vegan: Make sure you tell everyone you're vegan.