To ask why do meat eaters have such a problem with vegans?!

[CadyHeron]

Ok, genuine question, and I've been around here long enough to know this is probably going to descend into a bunfight but meh
Seriously. Why?! I've only recently noticed it since doing Veganuary and mainly carrying it on now even though it's finished. Up until then, I eat everything - fish,meat, cheese.....but at the same time eating lots of vegan and vegetarian food too as DH is a long time vegetarian.
(Who's gone vegan after completing Veganuary.)
Been out for dinner today.
"Surely you can have a little bit?!" (Erm, no )
We've also had "but it's not healthy!" (that all depends on how you do it,surely? I know I was eating a lot healthier during Veganuary as I was conscious about what I was eating and not just mindlessly shovelling stuff in - even though I love mindlessly shoving stuff in
Or you'll get a bacon sandwich shoved in your face. "You want this bacon, don't you? Don't you?"
Erm,no not really.
I don't give a shit whether people eat meat, why are they so bothered that I'm vegan for a while?!
Must be exhausting to be a proper one!
not including the militant ones that tell you meat is murder as they can just go away and practise the saying each to their own...

Surely you'd just include dishes that everyone can eat if you're catering, I know I would.

It depends. Someone with detailed and complex "clean eating" obsessions which changed with the phase of the moon? They can take their chances. I wouldn't cater specifically for that, even if they were Gwyneth Paltrow. Gluten intolerant or gluten avoiding or vegan or doesn't like carrots? Easy, and fun to do (and let's be honest, channa dhal fixes most of them) . Strict two-kitchen kosher? I wouldn't know how to, and don't feel inclined to learn or adapt sufficiently. Pork-avoidant? Trivially easy. Elderly relative who picks at everything in case it's foreign? They can go hungry.

I don’t notice what anyone else is eating ever and I definitely don’t want to talk about what they are eating.

Just eat what you want and stop talking about it.

Meat eater here. No problems with vegans

Omnivore here who likes a steak but adores vegetables. I welcome the latest Vegan fad because it has become large enough to commercially viable- dairy gives me eczema so a vegan option works for me. Don't really buy ready meals but have had a couple of the Wicked range from Tesco and they are really nice and fresh tasting.

I would never attack a Vegan for their choices but will respond if I am lectured about mine.

It depends. Someone with detailed and complex "clean eating" obsessions which changed with the phase of the moon? They can take their chances.
Elderly relative who picks at everything in case it's foreign? They can go hungry.

True can't be doing with anything like that either - definitely go hungry then!
Just saying vegans are being faddy though, it's not it's their choice, and it's really not hard to make a vegan dish that they can eat.

Just saying vegans are being faddy though, it's not it's their choice

I suspect "faddy" is "food views I don't approve of", "choice" is "food views I approve of".

And there have been many threads over the years in which people have gone "ewww! why are you eating that?" at the table over other people's food on the basis of a wide range of dislikes. How long ago was the Gareth and the spicy food thread?

I have no issue at all with anyone's dietary choices. As a parent of a child with a very severe allergy, what jumped up at me in your post, however, was the word 'mainly'. It is very hard for my child when people tell him that they can't eat food for some reason and then are eating that very food in front of him the next day. Also, recently I had a vegan house guest staying with us. I prepared vegan meals every day and then we went out to Pizza Express and they ordered an American pizza with meat and cheese as they didn't like the vegan option. Must say it irritated me. Could this be what they are responding to?

I guess it depends on the people around you. I have no issue with Vegans or Vegetarians. However we recently had a vegetarian join our team in work and straight away she was telling us why a vegetarian diet is so much better than a meat eaters diet. She would go on and on about how much better it is for your body and how it decreases your chances of certain illnesses etc, then she would go out for a cigarette. At restaurant's she also puts menus up around her so she doesn't have to look at anyone eating meat. Each to own but she definitely has more of an issue with us than we do with her.

At restaurant's she also puts menus up around her so she doesn't have to look at anyone eating meat.

Why do you invite her? She sounds incredibly hard work.

CuboidalSlipshoddy

She's told us that's what she does with her boyfriend (now ex) and her friends/family. We haven't experienced it yet

goldenbasket I don't say I'm a vegan though, I'm not one. I do sometimes go for the vegan choice when out in a restaurant though out of preference as I like the taste too.
DH though - properly vegan, but never says a word about it. You wouldn't know he was, but when you go out for a meal and order anything, the comments and eye rolly stuff starts!
Just get on with your own food lol, it's baffling.

At restaurant's she also puts menus up around her so she doesn't have to look at anyone eating meat.

well she sounds - batshit.

Also, recently I had a vegan house guest staying with us. I prepared vegan meals every day and then we went out to Pizza Express and they ordered an American pizza with meat and cheese as they didn't like the vegan option.

See, that would be infuriating, I suppose it's people like that who give them a bad name too. To say you're vegan and they prepare you vegan meals every day and then to go out and order cheesy pizza - beyond rude!

We haven't experienced it yet

You don't need to, either.

We had a regular curry trip out from my previous office, to a local place where we knew the owners. It had been going on for years, before I arrived I think. The place is a bit smoother now, and has tablecloths and shit, but at the time this was "menu under the glass tabletop, metal jug of water, no you can't bring alcohol, no cutlery unless you ask as you've got a chapati, right?" basic eating.

A new hire did the whole "but I don't like foreign food and it's really rough round there and it's too spicy and you're all hurting my feels".

Every time we went, we asked everyone in the building. We took Japanese visitors, who were mystified, Californian visitors, who were charmed, and French visitors, who reciprocated by taking us to fantastic hardcore Vietnamese places when we went over. It was halal, so for many (not all, many) Jews it would pass as kosher-compatible, there was plenty of vegetarian and vegan because they had some south Indian customers, there was no booze (no licence, and they weren't happy about you bringing your own, either) so that wasn't an issue. And it cost about a fiver a head, which usually whoever was the most senior person picked up and sometimes stuck on expenses.

So the occasion when I was summoned to HR and asked why we were excluding our new hire, who had complained we were eating in the wrong sort of restaurant for his feels, was a hoot. The HR rep was barely able to keep a straight face.

As a meat eater I don't give a toss what anyone else does or does not eat, none of my business. I even had a vegetarian phase that lasted several years my self, although I never told anyone, just didn't eat meat.
What I do give a toss about is vegans/vegetarians giving me grief over my food choices and wearing leather, piss off, mind your own business.

My DH was standing about on the street one day while wearing a leather jacket when a work friend walked up to him, dug him in the ribs and said, "bet that coat would look lovely if it was still on the cow".
Leather is a fucking byproduct, the cow as already been eaten and had it's bones boiled up for gelatine etc. To not use the very useful leather after the insides have all disappeared elsewhere is stupid.

IMO there are two issues. The first is that as a rule people who adopt the latest lifestyle are generally somewhat evangelical about it. It’s a bit like people who have just found God and want to share the good news with all and sundry. So you became a vegan last Sunday. How nice for you. Do I care? Not really, and we’ll see how many of the vegans who became vegan last sunday remain that way when the Cadbury’s crem eggs hit the shops .

Added to which when people go on and on and on about their latest find/lifestyle/fad/call it what you like it becomes very boring very quickly but it is also up there with any other kind of sanctimonious preaching which proclaims your thing to be better than mine. It isn’t better, it’s just different.

The second thing is the feeling of being judged. IME people only feel judged if they’re not 100% comfortable with their decisions or choices. If being a vegan works for you then you would be happy with that decision and would be able to laugh off the comments about wanting a bacon sandwich. Yeah they might get a bit boring, but surely if veganism is your thing then you have the courage of your convictions and no amount of anyone else’s comments would make a difference to that?

By way of an example I am teetotal. Never liked the taste, never cared for it, most recently I have medical conditions which mean I can’t drink anyway but even if I could I don’t so it wouldn’t have been a consideration. And bizarrely, people do judge people who don’t drink. I have no idea why, but I’ve e.g. seen threads on here from people saying that they wouldn’t have a relationship with someone who was teetotal and so on. I’ve had people tell me that they’d love to see me drunk so wouldn’t it be fun to spike my drinks one day ha ha ha ha. Do I feel judged? No. Do I feel that I am doing something isolating by not drinking? Absolutely not. Do I feel that I should maybe consider drinking to fit in? Not a chance. And more importantly, the comments from other people about how they wouldn’t want a relationship with someone who doesn’t drink or how they’d love to see someone drunk so maybe it’d be fun to spike their drinks says far more about them than it does about me.

I am 100% comfortable with my lifestyle decisions. Even when I was a teenager I could happily not drink and it didn’t bother me at all.

And equally, I have no need to preach to anyone else about the evils of alcohol. I have wine and beer in the house for visitors, doesn’t affect me if you drink. If you drink to excess every friday and Saturday night I might be a bit but I probably would be regardless of whether I enjoyed a glass of wine for dinner or not.

But I certainly couldn’t care less what other people think about whether I should be drinking or not any more than I care about whether some recently discovered vegan thinks about me having a bacon sandwich. And if the vegans were comfortable with their decision to be vegan what I or anyone else thought wouldn’t be a consideration anyway. So perhaps the question you ought to be asking is, why does it bother you so much?

I have literally never seen what OP describes

I have literally never seen what OP describes

lucky you then!

I have no issue with normal vegans but the sanctimonious/performance vegans are annoying AF. Quite frankly I find people doing it for health reasons a bit andassume that they are just attempting to starve themselves into loosing weight-doesn't always work but a lot of teenaged girls seem to think this is how it works. I find people doing it for moral reasons fine so long as they don't preach at you in which case I can't stop myself from pointing out how hypocritical it is to say that while wearing leather boots and holding a book in your hand. So long as vegans don't go on and on about how healthy they are/how good they are/how unhealthy meat is/how evil it is to drink milk then I really don't care and respect their dietary choices. I also don't like gluten fanatics. If you don't eat gluten for whatever reason fine but I really don't want to hear about how bloated it makes you. If you are having people shoving bacon in your face it's most likely because you are brings bore.

I definitely only have issues with performance vegans too.

performance vegans

lots of them on youtube tbh.

Cognitive dissonance.

OutyMcOutface
I agree. People who think the world should care about their eating habitd annoy me too.

I find a lot of the 'health' claims to be odd as well. Lots of these vegan youtubers/clean eaters 'i've a million followers on instagram so now i'm writing a cookbook and giving nutritional advice' actually sound bordering on eating disorders.

I keep reading that as:
To ask why do meat eaters have such a problem with vaginas