‘Tricked’ by vegan sausages

[Rhubarbpeony]

I had a friend round for dinner last night. It was a last minute plan (she lives in another city and only told me on the day that she was free that evening) so I didn’t make anything fancy. I had in the fridge a packet of Richmond vegan sausages and some potatoes, which I turned into olive oil mash. I’ve been vegan for about ten years - longer than the entire time I have known this friend. We have cooked for each other many times in the past.

As we were finishing eating, my husband got home from a late work event and saw that we had had the sausages. It’s not a brand we have tried before and they’re much cheaper than the kind we usually get, so he asked if they had been nice. I said they were good, and I’d happily have them again.

Friend gets a really odd look on her face and then says to me ‘you didn’t tell me these were vegan sausages.’ I said no, I assumed she would know that anything I cooked or ate would be vegan. She said I was wrong to assume, and that I had tricked her. She said it would be like me coming to dinner at her house and being tricked into eating a meat sausage.

AIBU or are these two things not the same?! For one thing, I definitely don’t feel like I tricked her - she saw me cook the sausages, and if she had asked anything about them I would have told her what was in them. For another, her diet doesn’t preclude her from eating vegan items, but mine does preclude me from eating meat, so IMO it’s a lot worse to give a vegan a meat sausage than it is to give a non-vegan a vegan sausage.

(for info: the sausages don’t contain any soy, and she doesn’t have any food allergies)

Oh no.

*eating with vegans!

Oh. That's a bad one!

Your friend is bonkers. Is she always this mad? Sounds like hard work

Even if local, if it’s beef or lamb it’s still not environmentally friendly Nor is any food production... none! There are issues with ALL food prosuction methods, vegge/vegan food production is not without it's issues too.

And, as I said, UK production of beef, lamb etc is not as environmentally disastrous as that shown in a few recent documentaires, which focussed entirely on other countries and didn't bother to mention those that have a far better, cleaner record, like the UK!

It's fine to have a dietary preference but to condemn one production method for using the same methods as another: you say we are selectively breeding animal for whatver we think best; all food crps have been bred the same way, for thousands of years. And now we have Monsanto etc and their modifications that still could wreck the planet's biodiversity.

And please don't believe anything PETA tell you! They lie, outrageously! I have posted previously about one campaign they probably still use the pictures from. It claimed to be of a vivisectionist at work in about 2003. The pictures were actually of a vet, visiting a laboratory that he was instrumental in getting closed down. And he died in 1991. He was the father of a good friend.

I have no resaon to expect that anything else they peddle is honest!

I've never heard of meat substitutes or quorn making people ill other than on mumsnet. Just saying...

If you look online there are lots of people who have an intolerance of quorn. I'm allergic to soya, which is a common allergy.

I kept being fed bean sprouts by a veggie friend. They make me violently ill. She keeps telling me they are a super food for people with delicate stomachs and it can't be them making me ill! I'm 55 years old, I think I've worked it out.

She once picked out the beansprouts from my dish, told me she had made it separately and smirked... until I didn't quite make it to her bathroom in time - not envy!

And no, I don't have lupus....

YANBU at all
makes mental note to try these on the DCs

Wow. This thread turned into a stooshie about whether vegan and veganism is better.

Couldn’t have seen that coming.

@eckhart how do you recommend eating your vegan friends? I like mine on a bun with some salad 😂

Why is it upsetting cooking for (presumably) good friends according to their dietary requirements?

I recently made an amazing vegan wellington and it was also gluten free served with a vegan gravy and various vegetable sides.
Even the meat eaters loved it, altho we had our own meat option.

I’ve never invited friends over to dinner then proceeded to feel losses off at having rob accommodate their dietary requirements.

Isn’t throwing a dinner party a pleasure? I really enjoyed finding a recipe I’d eat myself and experimenting till I had something delicious.

I really don’t mind catering for my vegan friends and family, because I love them and enjoy cooking. And making vegan food isn’t forcing me to cook with anything I don’t normally eat myself anyway.

As a meat eater frazzle I do much the same. Have cooked a few vegan friendly Christmas dinners and none of the meat eaters held back from trying the non meat options (and I don't mean the roasties, carefully not cooked in any animal fat )

I now have lots of practice in gluten free, DSis is newly diagnosed with ceoliac!

Happy to eat vegan food but not heavily processed food.

I wouldn’t eat artificial meat or a ready meal with meat. The salt content and preservatives are very unhealthy. Mind you, I won’t eat sausages either.

I’m really quite tolerant but listening to my spotty unhealthy looking trainee explaining why her (processed and almost veg free free) vegan diet was so so healthy made me quite tetchy.

Your friend is mad. If she is happy to eat a Richmond sausage, then she has low standards anyway.

MaybeNew this is an honest question not a bun fight: what is wrong with non-meat processed food? They don't have the nitrate necessary to preserve meat so what is the problem?

That's so funny!
There's literally nothing that a vegan could make that wouldn't be suitable for an normal omnivore. Literally nothing.
The fact that you are a fussy omnivore (in that you seem to have this peculiar need for animal products at every meal) doesn't change that.

When I say catering I mean do they have real milk for my coffee? Will a potato salad have say bacon, real cheese and whole egg mayo?
Yet if a vegan came to mine I'd be expected to have a plant juice for coffee, fake sausages if we had a bbq, that kind of thing. Aka buying stuff I'd never buy.
Oh no doubt, I'm fussy, the list of what I don't eat is longer than what I do, textures, flavours, spice, I'm all super picky on and yeah meat and dairy play a huge role in my diet. I'm comfortable with that. As I did say, I'd be a shit vegan. To me a main meal at night isn't a proper meal if there no meat

I also love how people say 'all vegannfoodnis shit' and then explain that they dont like 2 million different food items
Well we are always told how awesome a vegan diet is, everyone would love it, its so easily interchangable, fact is no, some of us would hate it, find it so boring and hate most things that are staple in vegan diets.

Well we are always told how awesome a vegan diet is, everyone would love it, its so easily interchangable, fact is no, some of us would hate it, find it so boring and hate most things that are staple in vegan diets

Nobody on this thread has said anything like this, and yet the anti-vegans are still all riled up. I think it demonstrates a propensity to get riled up, more than anything else, tbh. You know, like anybody who argues against a point that nobody in the discussion has made.

And you already probably eat the vast majority of things that the vast majority of vegans eat anyway. A lot of vegans don't eat or like the processed stuff. Are you vegetablist?

I've never met a person in real life who doesn't eat anything without animal products in, but these threads always bring out plenty of them.
The kind of people who would never have a salad without bacon in.
In a previous thread, someone claimed she wouldn't have cereal for breakfast, it had to be a bacon sandwich.
These kind of people are not normal.

I’m really quite tolerant but listening to my spotty unhealthy looking trainee explaining why her (processed and almost veg free free) vegan diet was so so healthy made me quite tetchy.

Being 'spotty' is not an indication of health. Some people just have problematic skin regardless of how healthy they eat.

She should have realised by the fact that you were eating it too. If she has a problem with vegan meat products then she should have told you in advance. I have no desire to eat fake or substitute anything including meat or cheese but I would explain that before being asked for dinner.

Yanbu in any way. She was rude.

Yet if a vegan came to mine I'd be expected to have a plant juice for coffee, fake sausages if we had a bbq, that kind of thing. Aka buying stuff I'd never buy.

I would never expect anyone to buy those things for me. I would bring my own plant juice and my own sausages. I don't know any vegan who would expect you to buy those things tbh.

When I say catering I mean do they have real milk for my coffee? Will a potato salad have say bacon, real cheese and whole egg mayo?

DP is not a vegan (although he has dramatically cut down) so you could just have some of his non-vegan food.

Apart from the impact on the environment because of the transport of almost all of the basic foodstuffs, some of which are higher for vegetables like green beans ect e.g. asparagus eaten in the UK has the highest carbon footprint compared to any other vegetable eaten in the country, with 5.3kg of carbon dioxide being produced for every kilogram of asparagus, mainly because much of it is imported by air from Peru. blueberries and strawberries air lifted in out of season. Seasonal, local eating has the least impact.

High salt levels in vege/vegan food, increased levels of stroke over that of meat eaters. High sugar and fat too. Levels of all of whch are raised in order to make often bland base products like mycoproteins tase of something! They often have high levels of preservatives too! That and the non food basis of many products. Artifical foods and all the chemical impact they could have!

Artificial fertilisers account for at least 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions and synthetic fertiliser emits carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane into the atmosphere during production and nitrous oxide when in use.

Just tilling the land for planting relases greenhouse gas and adds to soil erosion

Avocado's are climate killers all on ther own! Why they, and almonds, are grown in California is a scandal just waiting to become a Class Action!

Oh, nuts in general. Flown in, destruction of rainforests, replacing locally needed crops etc - palm oil and soy (and chocolate nowadays!)

Mushrooms - no veggie / vegan should eat some of them... they eat/process nematode worms for nitrogen! And all of thm are grown on beds of rotting organic waste... and the CO2 from keeping mushroom sheds warm

Obviously not as bad as meat production but there are real issues that won't go away if we all go veggie overnight.

I have been veggie, a meat eater and have about 20 years ago decided to eat what I like as ethically, locally and seasonally as possible. It's quite easy here as we have a lot of farm shops and I used to have a vegetable garden... must get an allotment soonish!

I'm not a vegan, but I've never had potato salad with cheese in! Where are these foods being served?!

@Charlesthekingcavalier actually we’ve had the Richmond ones and I can say with 100% certainty that they taste and feel like the regular Richmond sausages. Decent sausages, no. Richmond sausages, yes. Make of that what you will.

OP YANBU. Your friend is batshit.

@CuriousaboutSamphire I didn't get the memo that only vegans eat asparagus, strawberries and mushrooms. And I suppose we don't grow any food for these farmed animals either?