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.

There is not health benefit. Doctors would never recommend a vegan diet. I cater vegetarian because its cheaper. All guests (inc meat eaters) have vegetarian and I cater medical dietary needs.

Yep. Also, unless it states ‘all butter’ most ready made pastry is vegan.

Most food is vegan, that’s the weird thing about this. We have just been conditioned to think that animal products are necessary at every meal.

when you pay for a ticket including food, if i had to bring a Tupperware I'd want money back.

When my DCs were small there was a muslim child (ate halal) and a girl with severe allergies. School, us and other parents managed to cater for them by asking what was ok and going with that. Often for everyone.

Being Vegan isn't unreasonable and there are many many of them. They should be catered for, and not only with sweet bloody potato, which i hate.

What rubs me up the wrong way is the the notion that you “can’t eat anything”. You could, you are choosing not to and that is your right but you also have to accept that your whim is not the problem of other people.

I am happy to cater for vegans, vegetarians etc to a point but I must admit it’s a PITA to do different stuff all the time. My brother is veggie and his gf vegan and they’re quite irritating guests to have really.

As for “cross contamination”, you won’t die if you eat a hummus sandwich sitting on the same place as a ham sandwich. Get over yourself on that one

I guess you'll just have to request a custom made dish in restaurants then like vegans have had to do for so long 😂

@JenniferBarkley its not vegetarian if it’s been touching meat.. food companies wouldn’t be allowed to produce vegetarian food with it being contaminated with meat so if you’re a vegetarian you just can’t eat it. I would imagine most are the same as me

Exactly, there’s no greater strain on the NHS than those pesky vegans

I’d suggest you join these organising committees and you’ll see how much hard work goes into catering these events and providing something different on the off chance one family will buy it is just not viable. If you want a change be part of it!
we did vegan hotdogs at a pta bbq a year or so ago, we sold zero!! We sold out of meat ones as we always do!

@bloomtoperish '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)'

Wrong. Do you see veganism as a way to reduce animal cruelty or a way to cut greenhouse gases?

Being a vegetarian is a great way to reduce the carbon cost of our food, as is reducing the amount of meat we eat. They should both be encouraged, not sneered at.

I agree, it’s not that hard. I’m not vegan but a baked potato with beans it s easy to do.

I think vegans are catered for in most places now. My entire life I've always preferred to eat vegetarian food (lovely veg, nice cheese sauces, proper mayo and so on), but am now typically stuck eating either vegan or meat, so I go for meat these days 🙁

In not terribly concerned about being thought nice, but I'd say I'm being nice to the unpaid organisers of these events by suggesting you bring your own food.

I will continue to eat dead animals. I buy local, well-raised and humanely killed any time I'm buying because I passionately believe that's correct. I don't nag at orgaisers of community events to ensure they've done the same to cater for my food beliefs and add to their burden - i think that would be ungrateful and bad manners. They provide what they kindly provide and I decide whether or not to eat it.

Whether I have pets is neither here nor there. I wouldn't eat dog or cat for possibly illogical cultural reasons (which I expect I'd get over if I lived in a culture that did) and would eat, say, chickens or cows whether I also had them as pets or not.

I only eat in Asian, Italian or Mexican restaurants where its easy to get veggie food. I don't eat traditional British food anyway.

Your purity test is weird.

How do you humanly kill someone who doesn't want to die?

I don’t agree with people being lazy- it’s just that we’ve all been brought up with meat being the main/most enjoyable part of the dish so are stuck. I don’t know if it was you that said your children are happy with a plate of vegetables, but to a meat eater the vegetables are the side dish so they feel like they’re not feeding your child, also it doesn’t seem like a treat for eg a play date. And imagine at a birthday party! Also I remember Jamie Oliver saying we don’t know how to cook them to make them really gorgeous and I (as a really bad cook), find them the most difficult part to make tasty.

I made a lovely potato curry yesterday. It also happened to be vegan. The bread I served with it was flour free. Only non-vegan ingredient was an egg per person, but it was homemade, so easy to substitute a spoon of applesauce or vegan yoghurt for the egg, if someone wanted to do that. I think most people would like that sort of thing and probably wouldn't even notice it was vegan.

I'm not proposing to get into a full blown debate about the ethics of various diets.

I'm saying that I have particular standards I adhere to for buying my meat (which you may or may not agree with) but don't seek to impose them on unpaid volunteers kindly organising events (or indeed other parents kindly hosting my child).

I will refrain from commenting on the health I've observed of vegans around me but I do think it's hard to do a vegan diet well and properly balanced. I'm not sure that everyone takes the opportunity to educate themselves well enough to pull it off properly.

You impose them on innocent animals though

Oh no no. If you can’t be as smugly morally immaculate as vegans are, they won’t give you any credit at all.

Its the definition of letting “perfect” be enemy of “great”.

It seems to me that most people who eat what they would call a ‘normal’ diet have a more boring and restricted diet than vegans.

I do indeed.

Nature is brutal really. Chickens eat all manner of insects, slugs, snails. The only reason we don't absolutely have to hunt other animals to survive is that we have the modern world, where other options are readily available. There's probably less carbon footprint in me eating a deer I've hunted locally than in the lentils that were trucked across the country, maybe shipped from another country. But we live in a world where I don't have to hunt deer.

The school one is the example I think is wrong. A vegan option would also cater for those who don't eat certain meat for religious or cultural reasons.

I find this quite interesting. My daughter is gluten and dairy intolerant. We eat out fairly regularly. Plenty of chain restaurants offer vegan options. In our local town there are 3 dedicated vegan restaurants. The local pubs also all have vegan options.

For school functions, birthday parties etc I check in advance and if there isn't an option I bring my own. Mostly I offer to bring things and people say don't worry we have it covered we have x y z for her to eat.

I always have something with me just in case they have misunderstood what she can eat, but I think the options for vegans are hugely improved.