Is it really that hard.....? 🤔

[StillGotBabyBrain]

My family is vegan, not a massive deal.

When the school has events, no vegan option, so everyone gets a bbq or food catered and we don't. Not even a dairy free alternative for hot drinks! (Primary school, high school is better).

When they go for sleepovers I get worried parents asking me what should they do, can I provide food and drinks for them...

Pubs and restaurants barely cater for adults let alone add options for the kids menu.

Went to a choir meeting the other week, nothing I could eat from the food included in my ticket price.

Am I being unreasonable thinking it's really not that difficult to provide bread and houmous or vegetable dishes? They're suitable for everyone, so isn't a waste of food! Blows my mind.

Do you know you can get plenty of B12 from Marmite and nutritional yeast which many vegans (and meat eaters like myself) use to make things taste cheesy?

A few things concern me.

Firstly, compassion in world farming is not a vegan organisation, they are not advocating against using animals, they argue for animal welfare only, so your point in that regard makes no sense.

Secondly it is, in my opinion, disgusting to compare ending the practice of exploiting and killing sentient beings to “genocide”. Non-existence is not a harm, you are advocating for animals to be bred that grow so fast they cannot support their bodies and are killed at a matter of weeks old just so they get to exist. Also if you are concerned about species loss, animal farming of domestic species causes threats to native wild species.

Thirdly, of course a vegan is not going to feed the dead body parts of animals to their child. Once the child is old enough to understand the process of living animal being, often brutally, killed they can decide if they want to fund that or not.

Fourthly, free range means very little, look at spent chickens from free range egg farms in most cases you’ll find they look just as sad and broken as those from battery farms. The male chicks are still gassed or shredded alive shortly after hatching as they are no use (but apparently for you their one day short and distressing existence was worthwhile to prevent “genocide”?)

Fifthly, yes we are omnivores but the actual science on what we need to be healthy shows we can do that without animal products- various organisations like the British Dietic Association have confirmed that a plant based diet is suitable for all stages of life.

If you read my past threads I haven’t complained about this.
Ive never really experienced it tbh.
At bbqs at school I’ve accommodated it as we also have lots of children who by their religious beliefs don’t eat animals.

Its 91% of the world population btw and reducing year on year.

I love mushrooms and tofu - I can see my menu is mushroom heavy 😂- the issue I was highlighting is that cooking vegan is not as much as a problem people think it will be. I say this as someone who is very much a meat eater but ate about 3 meals a week that were vegetarian as a child and has continued in adulthood. Children away tonight so will have mushrooms on toast for my tea - yum! (Hopefully to compensate for the ridiculously large sausage roll I have had for my lunch)

animals are rarely grazed now. Absolute rubbish

With such a high level of b12 deficiency and doctors dishing out supplements it’s clear the small % of vegans and vegetarians do not make up the majority of these people.
B12 is difficult to get on a vegan/ vegetarian diet. However it’s also hard to get on all diets if you eat crap.
It’s all about being prepared to learn what a healthy lifestyle is and following that through.

I think being of Asian origin, I would be easily able to cater to Vegans without going out of the way :)
We are personally not Vegan but eat very limited meat- once a week as that is how I was brought up. I have a degree of lactose intolerance so I have herbal or black tea and don't expect anyone to provide me with dairy free milk when I visit.
But Asian food is naturally vegan without much effort.. we have stir fries, curries, rice and noodles, flatbreads, beansprout based dishes, lentils, salads, soups, seed based and sauce and chutney condiments which never have butter or milk..
Its a balanced diet as lot of ny family have lived well into their 90s.
But I do get that European traditional cuisines are based around meat or fish or eggs or bread. So such families would struggle to figure out Vegan meals.
Hence my daughter has been brought up to have meat based dishes like sausages and ham sandwiches outside. So she does not struggle at parties.. even though we wud never have ham or sausages at home as its not our traditional food.

I find it easiest to offer to bring a nice big casserole or stir fry or tofu curry type dish when I am invited to non Asian homes. And my dish is finished in seconds by all guests so don't think people dislike Vegan food always.

Its all new territory for many.. and important to be kind if nothing else 😊

Indeed. Though if you are talking to someone who just heats up food and doesn't cook from scratch, telling them how easy it is to replace mince with cooked green/puy lentils in dishes will be like speaking another language.

Many people just lack the knowledge of how to cook vegan meals, they’re so reliant on dairy and meat they have no clue how to make a meal that doesn’t contain them. I was vegan for a couple of years and tbh I found it exhausting meal planning after a while, it’s a lot harder and takes more effort to make a variety of nutritionally balanced tasty vegan meals.

Eating out was a huge issue as most places either don’t have a vegan option, it’s not available that day or it’s just fake meat/cheese and is usually terrible. It’s the main reason I gave up, also because my hair was falling out from I’m presuming lack of protein. I like tofu and beans, but was fed up of eating them every day at almost every meal, and I’m not a fan of processed fake meats, I found I was focussing so hard on trying to make sure I wasn’t deficient in anything that it took all the joy out of food.

I think for most people they’re not being rude they just genuinely do not understand what vegans can and can’t eat and don’t want to get it wrong. It’s hard as a vegan as well because some things you assume are vegan and they’re not and vice versa. I made a lot of mistakes because I didn’t check the packaging or didn’t understand what the ingredients were.

Please stop this. Most vegans feed their children well balanced meals and are very aware of the potential for B12 deficiency and mitigate against it. Many omnivores feed their children calorifically dense nutrition poor diets with little variety and with high potential for multiple vitamin deficiencies. There are many people in all diet spectrums who have disordered eating (I have indeed met beans and chips vegans as I have met people who seem to only eat meat) - it serves no one to be so mean just because you don't understand it. And this is me speaking as a meat eater.

It's the children's parents who have "religious beliefs", not the kids themselves, who just do as they're told.

While the number of vegans is slightly increasing, this most likely reflects an increase in the number of people who take up this fad for a while before returning to a properly balanced diet.

You didn't read what I wrote! I said that my beef was better for the planet and the health of the consumer than Linda McCartney sausages. I am well aware of the issues with soy which why I avoid it completely. It doesn't stop me eating meat and dairy.

No beef is better for the planet or the health of the consumer.

Year on year it’s reducing.

The numbers also don’t include regular flexitarians or pescetarians.

I agree that if you truly valued animals then you would eat high welfare meat.

If you live, you die. There's no ideal death is there, especially if you're a prey animal? Given the alternative, a quick death, free from disease is the lesser of the alternatives. The other alternative is not to exist at all which would be the consequence of everyone adopting a vegan diet.

As a past campaigner for Compassion in World Farming and ex vegetarian (from 12 years old) and teenage vegan, I am well educated on slaughter methods, here and abroad. I have chosen to eat and buy free range meat for myself. I wish my parents had been stricter with how I ate because I made myself very ill with vegan dogma that led on to related food anxiety.

There are some things you only get from eating meat, vitamin B12 for example, and putting the rights of unknown farm animals before your own children strikes me as fanatical.

I strongly believe my childhood stint of disordered eating left me malnourished. I stand a good three inches shorter than all of my close female relatives and am awaiting the resultant brittle bones that are due as I age.

I agree! For example, where do all the sheep go when they're not grazing?!!

I can't be bothered cooking in any shape or form, so yes, it really is that hard!

I think you are being UR. Its extra money, waste and work. Parents probably don’t know were to start. Just bring food with you.

I think YANBU to find it frustrating, but I also think it's difficult for smaller events to cater for everyone, and you also end up with the issue that vegetarian people end up getting lumped together with vegan people, so you have a meat option and then a vegan option, when plenty of vegetarian people would love to eat cheese or other dairy produce, etc. I know my vegetarian SIL gets annoyed when she eats out in places where there's only vegan stuff because she really love cheese and dairy! So I imagine they think that offering a meat option and then some other stuff that may be cheese-based is catering for the majority.

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My sheep are out grazing all year round. They come in at lambing time. They eat hay and silage during the winter. The ewes do get some supplementary feed before and after birth to make sure the lambs grow well in the womb and the ewes have a good milk supply. I would rather not do this because feed is bloody expensive.

Your reminding me of fun times when one dc was dairy and gluten free for medical reasons - was a nightmare to eat out. Pizza express was the only place that really catered safely at the time.

I'd join pta and suggest a pack of bean burgers. Surely they can be cooked first or even in school oven

I think parents worry they will get it wrong with sleep over kids. No one wants kid to go hungry

These 'natural' lifespans are not accurate. We don't slaughter lambs at 3 months old. The life span of a sheep is not 12 years old. Our rams stay on our farm till they die and none have lived as long as 12. And all they do is eat and sleep and run with the ewes for a few weeks.

For hot drinks I keep a dairy free milk powder in my handbag but most places have soya or oat milk these days

Seems odd boasting about the numbers while vegans remain a tiny unpopular minority (and doubtless always will), but then that's veganism for you. 😆