To trick someone into eating vegan?

[Idonthatevegans]

Please read my question before getting into a debate about veganism. That isn't really what it is about. It has no impact on my life if someone is a vegan or not, do what you wish.

I got into a discussion with someone recently, and found out that people are often surprised when they find out that there was no meat in the beef pie/ spag bol etc she served. And she gets a kick of that fact they couldn't tell the difference. Honestly I couldn't really, not in something like a spag bol.

I have however, tried quorn a few times in my life, with AWFUL results. I am in the bathroom within 1 hour and very sick for a day after. A 100% vegan meal without meat substitutes ya I'm 100% ok with. But if someone says I made beef pie, I would take them at their word. If I knew the person was vegan I would probably enquire if it was real meat only because I know how awfully I react to it. But if I didn't know that person was a vegan I would take it at face value. Yes it happens every so often I get offered tea around a friends aunt who we popped into or something like that.

To me, a vegan passing of something as meat to people who don't know and can therefore make up their own mind is as bad as me putting chicken stock into veg soup and telling someone it is vegan friendly. Ya the vast majority in both cases won't know the difference in taste or after affect. But both people have been denied the option of having their own choice. One has been tricked into thinking they are eating meat, one has been tricked into thinking they are not. I know there are hugely different moral implications there but both have been tricked when they should not have been.

I really don't want to this to break into a vegan/ non vegan debate. That is all that I got back on my last chat. The person wouldn't actually answer my question about tricking someone, just kept on a barrage of info about how vegan is amazing and that anyone who eat meat was the devil incarnate.

BTW - it's not something I would often say I am allergic to as I usually take how food is called at their face value.

I simply want to know:

AIBU - she can call her pie beef pie, even if it is not beef pie.

YANBU - you should know what you are eating. If it's called beef pie well of course you would expect it to be beef pie

YANBU mainly from an allergy POV , but quite honestly I’m not sure how someone can’t tell the difference between meat and meat substitute as I’ve tried a few and can definitely tell the difference . My daughter accidentally got given a vegan meatball starter in Zizzi instead of a gluten free option and you could tell just by looking at it , and it was revolting.

@BelleOfTheProvince

I'd be surprised at someone who was being cooked for by a vegan thinking they're going to get meat.

As a vegan, trust me, you do not want people unused to cooking meat cooking it for you. Guaranteed food poisoning.

I just find this a little hard to believe it would come up.

But I would echo what another poster has said that if you have intolerances you should be mentioning them anyway.

A meat eater without intolerances is not really equivalent to 'tricking' a vegan into eating meat. Most non vegan people don't not eat vegetables due to ethical reasons.

It's just a really weird situation that I can't imagine happening organically.

The only thing I have experienced that has come close is when I've made vegan treats for work. Label them, but people ignore anyway. Lots of bitching about sausage rolls, but polished off my cupcakes pretty quick.

Disagree, my DB and his entire family are vegan. My SIL would make meat dishes for her DF when he was alive, she’s also used cooked meat for other family members. How is cooking meat any different to cooking something else, if you don’t know how to cook it, look it up.

My SIL choose to put her beliefs aside to make sure her DF was eating properly in the last couple of years in his life. He wouldn’t eat meals on wheels and although he would respect her beliefs at her house she didn’t think it right to force vegan meal on him full time, so when she choose to make his meals for him she made food she knew he would eat.

Hi, wow lots of responses on here! She didn't do this to me, she isn't a friend just someone I was friends with on FB, we both happened to comment on a Christmas chocolate ad which went down an awful rabbit hole. I as a rule normally don't comment on anything to do with vegans, but felt I had to point out to her she shouldn't trick people into thinking they are eating meat.

I don't know the particular circumstances, just that she said she has and that they don't know the difference so why don't they eat it. She wasn't the first person I've seen to say similar things.

With regards to telling people I am intolerant/ allergic before going to their house for dinner. It really has never been an issue for me. I have a sister who is vegi but often cooks meat for her family so if she said it was beef pie I would believe her. If I was going to another vegetarians house I would tell them I am allergic to quorn. It just doesn't seem to be a common issue. Unlike my niece who will have to tell people for the rest of her life that she is coeliac

In general though if someone said I'm making chicken curry, or beef pie or something that is usually meat I wouldn't see the need to tell them. I've had two awful reactions, but each time I feed it to myself (tried once at about 18, again after about 10yrs to see if the intolerance had lifted, it had not).

I’m up all night vomiting if I eat Quorn so wouldn’t be happy with that at all.
Your friend is an arse! Would she like to eat meat products unwittingly? I doubt it!

How can you not tell if it's Quorn or a substitute there is a definite difference I mean people must know?

I'm a long time veggie, most people I know are aware, so its not something I could pull off, even if I wanted.
Yes - I don't get this. If this woman goes on about being vegan so much, won't people guess that the food she's eating is not actually beef? Or does she actually go to the lengths of cooking something separate for herself?

Well there is that does she say she's eating something different?

I'd be pretty annoyed.
I'd like to be told that it's a substitute. Wouldn't stop me from eating it, I'd always give it a try.
However I'm not down with anyone lying to me or potentially causing me to sit on the loo for 8 hours overnight when their substitute doesn't sit well with me!

YANBU some people are really allergic to Quorn.

I'm sure there was a case like this in America where someone fed their flatmates vegan food and one of them was hospitalised due to an allergic reaction (I think to the quorn or soy) and it ended with the person who cooked the food being sued and I think a criminal record... Obviously there were specific factors in that case, and it was America - but I still think its a foolish thing to do. Also, there's a difference between cooking for someone and them assuming that its got meat/cream/whatever in and specifically telling someone its not meat. If someone was cooking a beef dish for me it might not occur to me to tell them quorn makes them violently ill because why would it be in there...

It’s wrong, I would t do it. Also I now know where my diarrhoea came from, made quorn bolognese, I can the link now and will avoid it

@MurielSpriggs

It's not really the same as putting chicken stock in soup which you're claiming is vegan. I don't know anyone who has an ethical objection to eating vegan food. In fact I don't think it would be possible to construct one. It's more like serving up cheap cava as champagne and only owning up after everyone has said how nice it is.

@MurielSpriggs No of course no one has an objection morally to eating vegan food, a lot of meat eaters diets are made up of vegan food without any though, eg 1/2 my plate tonight will be veg, 1/4 rice, 1/4 beef

My point is labeling/ purposely telling someone that they are eating beef when in fact it is not beef is wrong.

Just as it would be wrong for me to claim my soup was vegan friendly even if I knew it wasn't.

It's not tricking someone not to feed them a dead animal! As a guest you are responsible for informing your host of any allergies, it's not like going to a sandwich shop.

Someone made us a quorn bolognese and we were very polite and said it was nice but we could most definitely tell the difference. Plenty of meals are vegan and you don’t have to pretend they are something they are not. If you are substituting with a common allergen then you should make people aware of what are serving.

Of course its not OK to trick people into eating anything they'd prefer not to eat. Yes to allergies (I have issues with Quorn and Soy, so I'd suffer if they'd been snuck in), but actually its just general twattish behaviour to try to trick people to prove a point and shove your views down their throat.

And no-one, except a vegan, thinks that meat substitutes taste like meat. They're just too polite to tell you how awful your food tasted. It is always, always better to cook a naturally vegan/vegetarian menu than to use substitutes of any kind. I'd far rather have just a bread roll and a large portion of side salad than eat a quorn spag bol (and my stomach would like me more for it too!).

@Alltheprettyseahorses

It's not tricking someone not to feed them a dead animal! As a guest you are responsible for informing your host of any allergies, it's not like going to a sandwich shop.

Of course its tricking someone to say "this is a beef pie" and give them a quorn pie! Why not be honest?

@MurielSpriggs

It's not really the same as putting chicken stock in soup which you're claiming is vegan. I don't know anyone who has an ethical objection to eating vegan food. In fact I don't think it would be possible to construct one. It's more like serving up cheap cava as champagne and only owning up after everyone has said how nice it is.

I think it is worse, is anyone allergic to chicken stock?

@Alltheprettyseahorses

It's not tricking someone not to feed them a dead animal! As a guest you are responsible for informing your host of any allergies, it's not like going to a sandwich shop.

It is if that person is allergic to the substitute. You shouldn't be calling something a beef pie if it's not actually a beef pie.

If someone said "heres a beef pie" I wouldn't automatically think to say 'im allergic to Quorn by the way'.

It is very wrong to trick someone into eating meat substitutes.

Physical reactions are not at all rare. Quorn state it can cause problems for some people on every supermarket product page, for instance.

I try vegetarian/vegan foods regularly and bloody hell, do some of them lay waste to my body.

I tried some vegan sausage rolls last week. Absolutely lovely.
Bunged me up, did not shit for 6 days. Sorry if TMI there.

I adore Quorn Southern Fried Burgers on a brioche but, damn, they give me terrible abdominal gut cramps and the runs.

Week before I tried a Pukka minced steak and onion vegan pie. Again gorgeous, nicer than the meat one. I was fine with that one.

I actually think it's worse to trick someone into eating substitutes than tricking them into eating meat because, although morally repugnant to feed a veggie/vegan meat, meat is unlikely to cause painful health related reactions.

To, even temporaily, cause someone pain so you can go, "see, I told you so" about faux meat is vile behaviour.

You should never trick someone into eating anything. And surely nobody really thinks that vegan spag bol tastes like meat!

It's weird and controlling, in my opinion. I would assume food cooked by a vegan wouldn't use animal products or by products but lying directly to someone about what they're eating is very strange behaviour.

Back in the day before quorn, I was mates with a very evangelical vegan. He made chili with tvp to prove just that point for a byo type party. No one knew who made it.And stood there smugly whilst all these pissed up students ate it. (Honestly! They were hungry and drunk, they would have eaten anything)Including me, the coeliac. Honestly I thought I was going to turn inside out.

You don't have to cook a meat dish but you should be honest about what's in the meal so that the person knows it's a meat substitute.
It would piss me off if someone lied, like seriously what is the point? Vegans would be up in arms if you fed them a meat dish without telling them the truth.

@lazylinguist

I am confused about people who claim that they can't tell the difference between substitutes and meat.

Me too. MIL once made bolognese with quorn for all of us (FIL is pescatarian but she normally makes something separate for him). It was horrible (her meat bolognese is lovely) and it gave me awful indigestion. I have no problem with not eating meat - I could pretty easily be vegetarian- but all the meat substitutes I've tried have been not very nice.

Me three. The taste and the texture is all wrong.

I eat meat and a wide range of meat substitutes and like both. Vegan alternatives to burgers and sausages are softer and usually have a slightly different flavour. Same for Quorn mince. Chicken style quorn is probably the closest in nuggets, but I could probably still tell.

But I still think you should be honest about what you're serving because you don't always know about other people's allergies, intolerences etc.

I would need to know as I have a nut allergy and nuts are used a lot in vegan food.