Food orders for work related events are to be vegan and vegetarian only

[ValerieVomit]

We all received an email at work to say that when we order catering in future for work related events we can only order vegetarian and vegan food. The management team has imposed this. It's to reduce our carbon footprint. I don't think that this means there is to be no carnivorous food available for the rest of the organisation but our department won't allow us to order any.

Reasonable or not?

There is so much carbon cost bollocks around. For all those going on about locally-sourced as lower carbon, please read How Bad Are Bananas, or have a look at Our World in Data website. Shipping non-refridgerated foodstuffs is a fraction of their total carbon cost. Better a shipped banana than a hothouse tomato. Beef and dairy foods are the worst carbon emitters (regardless of provenance) by some margin (although airflown veg are terrible so just being a veggie is not enough to feel smug).

I wish all corporate catering was vegan and low-dairy veggie - save meat consumption for special occasions, then make it ethically sourced and expensive (and not beef) which most corporate catering will never be.

I’d just be taking in my own smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel, as usual.

FinallyaSunnyDay
This thread prompted me to revisit the BBC's food carbon calculator, where I noticed that tomatoes driven from Spain have about half the carbon footprint of hothouse tomatoes produced in the UK. I've been assiduously buying British tomatoes like a good little ethical consumer for years 😳

But both pale into insignificance compared to the carbon footprint of meat, especially beef.

Depends on what food is available. I think it's common for vegan menu options in particular to be low-effort, low-quality, full of very processed ingredients that in their non-vegan form are very simple basic foods. & it's often frustrating if you don't just want a plate of carbs. But if it's food with plenty of tasty balanced options then I think you could probably entice people to order it without removing other options.

I don’t get how to vote because you haven’t said which side of the fence you fall under but I think it’s reasonable.

Everyone can eat vegetarian or vegan so there’s no issues of taste or whatever. And good on them for having an environmental conscience. Anyone disagreeing and demanding meat needs to get over it to be honest. Am I am neither vegetarian nor vegan (although I don’t eat much meat due to cost to be fair).

But this could be said for meat. If you’re buying from a shit place it’ll be shit if it’s meat or vegan. Vegan could simply mean no meat or dairy, it doesn’t have to mean an alternative. So veggies, hummus, that sort of thing.

Mike Bernes-Lee is a climatologist (God their parents must be proud, two amazing scientists for kids) and he wrote a book that very simply showed carbon calculations. It was truly shocking and I had to stop reading because I think I would have stopped eating altogether! The things I suspected to be low carbon were very much not!

Out of order to impose dietary preferences on others. Plus vegan food is extremely limited.

Especially when these meetings are held over the lunch break.

Cringy virtue signalling.

It’s Just a bit of meat? It is possible to go without it for one bloody meal? As someone who likes meat, I could happily cope without it ever again. One meal isn’t going to kill anyone. Especially when that meal is paid for. They’re not asking their employees to cut it out of their diet or get fired, it’s one meal.

I don’t see how anyone can get their knickers in a twist over being deprived of meat during a free feed once every now and again.

And vegetable and fruit are not limited at all. There’s a huge range, with some amazing flavours. And that’s not including all the other bits like legumes you can throw in, spices, flavours. Different types of bread. Meat isn’t everything.

Yes definitely, I'm not saying this is impossible. Would love to see more lentil dishes for example. I just think most places/suppliers don't have the skill or knowledge to make nice vegan food and it is usually easier to pull together healthy, tasty non-vegan food. People get tired when the only option they ever get is dried out packaged falafel, some kind of burger, and ice cream made of twenty forms of pea protein isolate, coconut oil and glucose syrup. But whenever I've been at a work event where there have been genuinely appealing vegan options, the meat-eaters often order them.

Oh yes I agree with this or the vegetarian option always seems to be ‘goats cheese and caramelised onion tart’. We’ve started eating vegan a lot at home and it’s so delicious because we’ve been so much more inventive. I agree that more people would enjoy non-meat dishes if they were cooked well, we used a few cookery books and it’s been eye opening!

"One meal isn’t going to kill anyone."

You say that, but...

I often cannot eat vegan dishes as they will kill me. I like good vegan food, but lazy vegan food often is made with things I'm allergic to in it. I'm vegetarian, so it's not as if I have meat cravings, but the ultra-processed vegan crap will land me in hospital.

If vegan is used to mean more fresh vegetables and pulses, sure. Love it. If it means ultra-processed fake meat and fake cheese, it's not snobbery, I actually can't do it.

Then eat the vegetarian. A company making lazy vegan food is just as likely to be making shit meat-based food. You think the meat they put in Tesco sandwiches is healthy? Come on, it’ll be fucking terrible. Just as bad as a bit of vegan cheese (although not as tasteless as vegan cheese is hideous). Your issue isn’t about meat or no meat, it’s about quality and that’s a whole different argument. Bread from supermarkets is a UPF. They don’t make meat sarnies with nice freshly cooked healthy bread and vegan with shit so it’s not about UPFs at all.

Buffets themselves are wasteful though. People over eat and sometimes lots of food is wasted.
Really they should maybe think outside the box of something that creates less waste.

Yes, MBL's book is How Bad Are Bananas, mentioned in my pp. Sounds dull af but really really isn't. And makes you think about carbon costs more widely too, not just food but house renovations, a Google search, riding a bicycle etc etc.

My issue is about survival. When you start replacing all food with vegan food, the odds of the food being something that I can eat start to diminish rapidly It's never a choice of meat/veggie vs good vegan... It's a choice of meat/veggie vs ultra-processed crap vegan.

It's all coconut oil, cashew nuts, almonds... Nothing that I can actually identify myself from looking at the dish in front of me. Vegan food at mass-catered events fills me with dread.

Veggie food comes with cheese. Sometimes cheap cheese, but real cheese. It won't kill me.

Vegan food comes with cheese made from nuts or coconut. It's not just a crap alternative in terms of texture etc, it's a crap alternative in that I am allergic to it.

As for Tesco sandwiches, at least I can read the ingredients easily. Have you ever tried to find out what's in the food at a work event? It's impossible to find out with mass catering. You just get random unlabelled food circulating in front of you, and by the time someone has managed to ask the chef, the food has been eaten already by someone who doesn't have to think about what will kill them.

Mass-catered vegan food is the bane of my life.

Are you really complaining about a free lunch…?!
Come to the public sector. Occasionally my boss gets a loaf of bread on a whoopsie and makes us a round of toast. It feels like Christmas!

Ah apologies, I missed your post. It’s so shocking isn’t it? I didn’t realise that emails use so much carbon, now I refuse to send anything pointless like ‘Thanks for this’ so I might sound like a rude bastard but still 😂

Ooh I wonder if posting on MN uses carbon? 😕

Are you really complaining about being hungry...?! There are starving children in Africa!

It is normal for people to be unhappy when their normal expected conditions change in a way that they do not like.

In my case, I'm unhappy about the gradual shift from 1) meat, veggie and vegan options to 2) meat or vegan only. It's happening at many places. Even when veggie and vegan remain the two options (as in the OP's case), it often soon changes to vegan only, because vegetarian people are assumed to eat vegan food and that's simpler/cheaper than to cater for two different similar-ish options.

It's embarrassing having to ask so many questions about vegan food, as it draws attention to my many complex allergies and makes me feel intensely vulnerable. It's not nice having to repeatedly tell strangers that things will kill you, wait for someone to find out if you can eat it, get an unclear answer, and get that answer after all the food has been eaten anyway, so it's then a moot point.

I’ve worked i. The environmental sector for years so meat free has been commonplace at events for as long as I can recall. Vegan is normally vegetable pasties or falafel/hummus and veg wrap type things. Jackfruit on occasion. I’ve never seen fake meat or cheese, it’s too expensive and a lot of vegans don’t like it.
Sonin surprised at you having so many bad vegan options shoved in your face it’s become the bane of your life. Still, if the same thing happens to the OP they can have the vegetarian option instead.

The meat sandwiches you get at a function will be just as bad for you and as overly processed as the veggie and vegan. The meat and the bread and the sauce will be shit. Sorry, but I’m not buying this argument at all. If you have to avoid UPFs as a matter of health then you need to avoid the meat catered crap too because the stuff that goes into them (and yes, they’re the same as Tesco sandwiches) is all just shit if it comes from an shit company. So if the vegan offering is shit, the neat offering will be shit too. They don’t make nice meat and shit cheese in these things.

I don't think I've ever seen these ultra processed meat substitute offered as part of a vegan buffet. I'm not vegetarian but when faced with a business spread, I go for the veg options ahead of all the processed ham, pastrami, sausage, bacon, cheese.

I have IBS and can't eat onion or garlic. Almost all processed vegan and vegetarian food has either onion or garlic or both in it to give it some flavour. I'd be pissed off.

Perhaps free meals should be stopped then, and you can buy your own meal.

I avoid UPF.