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.

This is was my ex mother in law so either we’re friends or there’s more than one mother in law who thinks quiche Lorraine is veggie out there!!

They may as well eat meat, you can't separate the meat and dairy/egg industries. Vegetarianism is a great step towards veganism but in it's own it's pretty meaningless, unless you are incredibly careful about what animal products you're consuming (i.e. not eating eggs and dairy in standard restaurants)

I am surprised at how often you are left without vegan options, OP. I know lots of schools that have vegan options eaten by students with varying dietary needs (eg Jewish students who only would eat Kosher meat, Muslims who eat Halal) and it's easier to have a vegan option.
If there often isn't a vegan option, I'm surprised you don't bring something suitable if you know you won't be catered for. As to hot drinks, surely you can have black tea or coffee?
I am also very surprised you said you struggle to find vegan options in pubs etc- I find where there used to be a couple of vegetarian options it is now almost always vegan.

Yes @bloomtoperish I don't eat meat because I don't like meat. So what? Still helps the planet and is more ethical, though it's not my primary main. Just like I walk everywhere to stay fit. Still helps the planet.

Aim not main.

OP your arguments don’t hold up. On the one hand you’re berating people for not catering to you, and saying that you regularly go to events where as a vegan you can eat nothing. Then on the other hand you’re claiming a vegan diet is “not restrictive at all”. Can you not see how those statements contradict each other? If a vegan diet was not restrictive then be definition you would be able to eat most of what most people eat anyway. But you can’t. Because it is restrictive. This is the answer to your question - why won’t people cater to us? Because it’s restrictive!! It’s really not complicated.

There’s a separate argument about whether or not people want to cater to every dietary allergy, requirement or - quite frankly - whim (I’ve seen people write on wedding RSVPs things like “no mushrooms please I have a sensory aversion!” 🙄). However you don’t seem to recognise that some of your own choices may be contraindicated for others. Lots of nice vegan dishes contain nuts which are always banned at our PTA type events because of severe allergies. People can have allergies to strawberry or kiwi. Diabetics have to eat low carb. Etc etc etc. You’re asking people to be more “open minded” but don’t seem to have considered that other people might see your own view as being quite narrow minded.

I know how you feel. My DDs have serious allergies that mean a vegan option is often the safest choice outside the house - and yet so many places still just don't cater.
It's a bloody nightmare. We just take packed lunches everywhere now tbh.

Vegan pastry is extraordinarily easy to make: olive oil, salt and plain flour rubbed to a crumbly texture then add ice cubes and enough water to bind into small balls.
Take out ice cubes when done.
Refrigerate until needed ^^misses point of thread😁

Restaurants decide their menus based on what they think will result in the highest profit. Most places offer a vegan option or two but evidently don't consider anything beyond that to be as profitable. So that's that.

Your demands that your preferences be specially catered for at personal or low key community events increases the mental load on the people (mainly women) who organise them. It's not difficult to you because you organise your life around it already and are in that train of thinking through habit but other people would have to expend time and energy carefully considering the parameters of your restriction, alongside all the other restrictions of others (many more important including allergies), to meet this. The fact that some of the allergy food may be suitable for vegans is neither here nor there - you're asking the oranisers to put themselves in everyone's individuals shoes to consider the proposed catering from all angles so that they can advise whether each dish is suitable. It's a bloody faff and absolutely additionally burdensome.

When we have individual children over I try to cater for their diets as I want them to feel welcome. However, I do lose patience at bigger events when food is only part of the things to be organised in the first place and when faced with actual allergies - nut, dairy, lactose, gluten, soy, sesame, fruit (surprisingly a real thing) - all of which are actually potentially life-threatening then to be nagged at by people who just have a personal belief or preference of some sort around food whether it is suitable for them to eat. That's all very fine but funnily enough is not my priority - sort yourself out!

Eating dead stuff is gross, the animals have shit lives, it's also bad for the planet. If it makes you all feel better to slag off the OP then that says a lot about you. We can't sustain this amount of meat eating in the world so things need to change, luckily a huge proportion of people already are already making changes

to be nagged at by people who just have a personal belief or preference of some sort around food whether it is suitable for them to eat. That's all very fine but funnily enough is not my priority - sort yourself out

Wow you sound nice. Keep eating your dead animals, do you have pets?

Most people go to a tried and tested, quick to make, ingredients in the pantry, type of dish to take out.
It makes sense as they know their kids will eat it.

Most people are not vegans so their dish won't be vegan.
(Vegan is no butter, no dairy etc) It is not hard to produce food without meat however to not include eggs, cheese, gelatin, cream and milk etc is tedious and not at all tasty.

You could do similar - make a tried and tested dish - and so your kids could eat your food.
My favourite food has either eggs, butter, cheese or meat.
My cooking surfaces could have the same so I do not volunteer to make a vegan meal, though I have purchased premade frozen options for guests at a function.

But you can’t offer a plate of vegetables at a sleepover for breakfast, lunch and dinner can you. Are you expecting the parents of other children to go out and buy all these vegan products just for one sleepover? Much easier to just ask you to provide something as you are already stocked up. If you’re choosing to have an extremely restrictive diet for your family then YOU are the one who has to facilitate it, not everyone else.

DH Auntie was a vegan so the whole family was, this is a long time ago. All cousins plus DH are in their fifties now. They ate what they wanted to once they went off to University, I would say one went overboard and has a bit of an issue with food now.

Have catered for vegetarians but never a vegan.

It's extraordinarily entitled behaviour to think and believe that a primary school Parent's Committee who are, at the end of the day, just a bunch of unpaid, hassled, busy, volunteer parents should put themselves out for your family despite your protestations that it can't be that hard.

How many times have you catered for or put yourself out there to help other people's families at this school or any other schools op?!

Perhaps stop moaning and offer to help out and make the vegan options yourself?!

Win win! 😁

I have a relative who is vegan and I remember panicking a bit when she and her DC came to stay, wondering what the heck to feed her. Her DC aren't vegan, but one has a nut allergy. I was mulling over all the dishes I make regularly and realised about a third of them are vegan, a habit carried over from when I was vegetarian for many years. I hadn't realised how much vegan food I cook. So it was ok in the end and I also bought in some oat milk and vegan spread.

I do think it's not just about inconvenience when people get agitated about catering for vegans - it's also about lack of confidence. If you're used to cooking a particular way and that's your comfort zone, it can be quite stressful worrying about whether you can provide something that is not just edible, but enjoyable for your guest. I am extremely lacking in confidence about cooking meat because I was vegetarian when I started learning the basics, so that is my comfort zone. I introduced fish back into my diet and was pescatarian for a few years, so I'm pretty good with fish dishes. DS1 loves meat, but it's a case of making something vegetarian and chucking in some meat for him, rather than the other way round!!

Does it maybe depend on people's access to big supermarkets? I'm not a massive fan of cooking and what I do cook tends to be quite simple - veg/meat tray bakes, stir fries, curries, stuff like that - so making a 'vegan option' wouldn't necessarily be as simple as 'just leaving the meat out', it would mean making a whole other meal (I know you say just veg is fine but I'd feel terrible offering that alone!).

BUT - there are sooo many vegan options in our local Tesco! Vegan ready meals or vegan pizza etc followed by vegan ice cream or puds for a playdate; vegan sausages, kebabs and burgers for a BBQ; vegan sauces; vegan sausage rolls, nuggets, dips, vegan bread/pittas etc, cocktail sausages etc for a buffet... None of these things require somebody to be a whizz in the kitchen or make some kind of culinary delight using unfamiliar products like tofu or whatever. You just need to follow basic cooking instructions and keep things separate while cooking!

@PonkyPonky it's really quite simple. I bet a lot of your store cupboard stuff is vegan without you knowing it.

I will happily make vegetarian foods for visitors but I don't do vegan beyond veggie soups and basic tomato & olive pasta. It usually requires a whole set of new base ingredients that I won't use again so they go in the bin and it's a waste. Shop-bought vegan stuff is ludicrously expensive and I don't buy UPFS.

Plus I'd be cooking with ingredients that I have no experience of, and the results are unlikely to be pleasant.

Having said that, we eat huge amounts of fruit & veg so there are always staples like good wholemeal bread, olives, salad and bananas/apples to fill up on.

Yes I agree. I'm not vegan but members of my family are

Although I've heard they're even less accommodating in France and Britain is one of the more inclusive countries when it comes to vegan/vegetarian food.

YABU to suggest that a vegan diet isn't restrictive when it absolutely categorically is

Q: how do you know if someone is a vegan?
A: they tell you. Again and again.

Odfod

My DH’s best friend is vegan and although I adore him, I always have a little internal “for fucks sake” moment when I hear he’s coming to a barbecue because it means I’ve now got to buy all extra stuff -vegan burgers, vegan sausages, vegan bread, vegan salad dressing, vegan butter and then I’ve got to keep the remainder of the vegan stuff in my fridge or freezer as he’ll have one burger and one sausage out of the pack of six. And yes, I know that I could just make most of the barbecue vegan and avoid having to double the work and double the cost but I’m then pissed off because I actually want to have toasted brioche burger buns, crispy bacon and feta in the salad, real mayo in the coleslaw and corn on the cob drenched in real butter. So I double up and make the version I want plus a vegan option. I can see why people don’t like it because it is costly and a hassle if the majority being catered for are not vegan.

Sleepovers - yeah, I can see why parents would panic. If your kid wanted a pizza party sleepover, you would feel like the shittest person in the world giving pizza and cake to most of the kids and vegetables and hummus to the vegan child.

I’m vegetarian and get the frustration about people seemingly not able to think about non-meat dishes and the food presented or cooked alongside meat. Sigh. Unfortunately I think YABU because veganism is hardcore for most people and it’s a challenge to make it tasty or varied.