‘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)

I’m not usually a fan of vegans, but she was in your house and you fed her. She should be grateful for the free meal! Not cool for her to pitch a fit about it.

Bloody ridiculous. Now I'm not a fan of processed vegan foods like fake bacon or sausages but I eat vegan meals all the time! Jacket spud with beans and salad, pasta and tomato sauce, vegetable or lentil soups (if I've no ham stock) or oven roasted veggies. If I were fed any of these I wouldn't think I'd been tricked into eating vegan food. It's just food with no animal products!

Vegans can't eat meat or animal products. Meat eaters like myself can and regularly do eat vegan meals even if they don't think of them as specifically a vegan dish.

She is very odd if she thought you had cooked her meat sausages knowing you are a vegan let alone the reaction about her eating them.

I don't eat pig products so would never eat pork sausages i eat Veggie sausages of all varieties and there is no way you can mistake them for the "real" thing.

I wouldn’t expect to go to my vegan sister’s house and be cooked meat. Why would she cook meat? It’s against what she believes in.

Your friend is batshit. Also, with all due respect, how could she have not noticed that they were vegan? Vegan sausages taste nothing like meat.

YANBU unless your friend is strictly a carnivore which I doubt she is.

I wouldn't be happy to be served vegan sausages without being told, but that's because I dont eat soya as it can interfere with the absorption of my medication.

However if I was eating with a known vegan and they didnt mention anything then I would probably check.

@MyDcAreMarvel why are you limiting soy because you are TTC?

I wouldn't be happy to be served vegan sausages without being told, but that's because I dont eat soya as it can interfere with the absorption of my medication

So presumably this is something you would check before eating anything with unknown ingredients? If there's an allergy/contraindication, then the 'vegan' thing is irrelevant.

And OP, your friend is bonkers.

The Richmond vegan sausages are our favourite now.
Rare meat eater Dh said he wouldn’t have known 🌿

Also, with all due respect, how could she have not noticed that they were vegan? Vegan sausages taste nothing like meat

You're right they usually taste nothing like, but I' had these Richmond ones the other week - they're scarily realistic!
(I say this as a meat eater who loves a good (proper meat!) sausage sarnie)
They even look like meat sausages.
I can see how she felt "tricked."
However, how the heck she was tricked if her vegan friend was eating them too I have no idea lol, did she just have a brain fart moment?!

No I don't work for Richmond lol
They look like actual sasu

random whatever the hell that is sentence underneath my disclaimer, looks like my keyboard had a brain fart moment of its own

I'm assuming Richmond vegan sausages taste better than Richmond "meat" sausages, which are essentially mildly flavoured bread in a tube...

She's being a tit. Don't feed her again

I love a good meat free sub that would pass for meat. I'm not even veggie or vegan, just enjoy it. Your friend was being very strange.

@TealWater Considering the World Health Organisation, the NHS, the Canadian and the American governments, etc. have confirmed that a vegan diet is healthy for people at all stages of life, I don't think what 'someone in a store' told you is relevant.

It is a fact that a healthy vegan diet is suitable for humans; so I don't see what logic a moral belief in eating meat can hold? Unless you think the WHO and the NHS are part of an evil vegan conspiracy? If you do I think you should take a look in the mirror if you want to see what a cult follower looks like.

Anyway, as lovely as it is that you've found a way to turn this post into a vegan bashing opportunity, that is not what the OP is about. The OP is about someone's friend going into their vegan friend's house and getting angry that she didn't make a disclaimer before the meal that the meal was vegan. I find it so baffling that some non-vegans think its odd that a vegan cooked a vegan meal in their own home? Why would you ever assume they would do otherwise? You can follow your moral belief of eating meat by cooking your own meat meals, in your own home; not demanding that your friends do it for you.

@Bezalelle that's different imo. The effects of giving people non alcoholic drinks but telling them they're alcoholic are well documented. So your dad did that purely to humiliate people which is unkind - a trait people wouldn't want in a friend.

OP your situation was totally different! Your friend can't have been bothered as she didn't think to ask and she ate them....surely you can tell the difference!

Your friend is being very unreasonable. It's not comparable to giving a vegan meat and it's hard to see why she is making such an issue out of it. Very strange.

Oh yes Atkins. Is 'paleo' the same thing?

No. Similar, but not the same. Paleo doesn't involve dairy but you could eat fruit and honey for example, because Paleo man would have foraged for those. It's lower in carbs by default because it doesn't include eating farms grains. But it isn't necessarily as low carb as Keto.

Keto is virtually identical to Atkins. It just doesn't have a pioneer doctor's name attached to it, that's all. I think it focuses a bit more on measuring/limiting your protein whereas with Atkins the protein was a free food. But it's basically the same thing - getting your body into the state of ketosis by severely limiting carbohydrates and massively upping fat levels, so long as they are natural fats, animal or plant, doesn't matter so long as they are not highly processed trans fats, which are extremely unhealthy in large quantities.

This will force your body to burn stored body fat while still feeding your brain and organs of the vital nutrients they need.

farmed grains

You were eating the same thing- did she think you had given up being vegan?

Good question Arguementative

So much about this doesn't add up really unless you are trying to plug Richmond vegan sausages which are much cheaper than other popluar brands and SO GOOD that meat eaters can't tell the difference even though they were fed to them by their 10 years and counting vegan friend.

I'm firmly of the belief that most of the people that deride vegan food as bland are doing it because they are (possibly subconsciously) feeling defensive about their own food choices, and so attack with bullshit reasons not to eat vegan food.

The others have just had bad vegan food.

I'm not vegan or even vegetarian. But when eating out I would chose a vegan curry over a beef, lamb or chicken one any day. Vegetable curries have a mix of flavours and textures with different veg in it, meat ones usually just have one kind of meat and little or no veg.

@PersephoneandHades I think are taking this too personally. I am not turning this into a 'vegan-bashing' thread at all, that is how you are choosing to take it because it seems you cannot handle different opinion than yours. Those same organisations and health depts also say a meat-eating and dairy diets are healthy too, or did you conveniently leave that out? Ever heard of the 5 food groups pyramid that all health departments advocate sticking by?

It is not an either/or. The point I am making, is that vegans are no more superior in their beliefs than meat-eaters. Meat-eaters believe ethically that it is a healthy diet, and so do doctors and dieticians the world over for decades. My point was simply to say that meat-eaters adopt that lifestyle choice for ethical reasons too. Just because you disagree, doesn't make them any less moral and ethical reasons, nor does it make vegans more virtuous. It is not an either/or situation, it is not a competition. That is why I said each to their own. You seem though to be taking the combative attitude that some (not all, some) vegans do of believing only they make choices on ethical reasons, and meat-eaters cannot possibly choose their lifestyle on beliefs. I don't know if you are a vegan or not but you are whether you mean to or not, giving off that same narrow-minded combative attitude that some vegans have.

I can't believe that anyone who ate meat would genuinely believe that a vegan sausage was actual meat, unless she only ever eats disgusting cheapie sausages.

I think one form of homogenised tightly packed protein tastes similar to another tbh. Grind pigs up small enough and mix with God knows what and the texture is the same....

Vegan sausages have a lot of God-knows-what additions too, tbf. #balance