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?

You sound like one of the idiots who went hungry at my wedding.

As OpieMo posted, it means all the food is accessible for everyone bar intolerances and allergies. And as a vegetarian for over fifty years, this would solve the endless problem of omnivores and carnivores deciding they like the look of the vegetarian alternatives and scoffing the lot. Even if I preordered.

It wouldn’t bother me & would makes things simpler for the person arranging catering. Sounds a bit odd it’s only your department & without discussion though!

Why? Are you a cat?

I have just eaten a vegan lunch. I am not vegan or even vegetarian, but I had the rest of the roasted vegetables that I made last night (roasted in Indian spices), some salad and some almonds. It was delicious.

Argentina is one of the countries where maize and soya is grown in vast quantities for animal feed. So even locally produced meat involves importing lots of food. It would make more sense to feed chickens/pigs/cattle in countries like Argentina, Brazil and USA then import the carcasses. Of course that is exactly where a lot of our meat comes from. Together with beef produced in grasslands in Argentina and the USA and beef produced on land where there was forest in Brazil.

What makes most sense is for us in Britain to eat maize and soya, and all the other grains and pulses whether they are grown near or far away.

I don't eat vegan cheese but they should have a right to call it 'cheese'. We've had quince cheese for centuries just like we've have coconut 'milk'. I don't think that people should be allowed to call their product hummus if it contains sugar: sugar is not an ingredient of hummus but one supermarket sells hummus with sugar in it.

@SuePine69 I don't mind if they call things cheese in Inverted commas. I just think it's performative to claim they care about carbon by making a small group of people eat only veg or vegan food. From where? The same supplier that sells low welfare meat? If I was the office manager I'd be rolling my eyes.

Yes because most emissions are generated at the production not the transport stage.

Of course that is exactly where a lot of our meat comes from. Together with beef produced in grasslands in Argentina and the USA and beef produced on land where there was forest in Brazil. We import the majority of our beef from the EU principally from Ireland.

Soya is grown in Europe. Most soya imported to the UK from north and South America is fed to chickens and pigs.

I’m retired now, but when I was organising food I certainly didn’t specify vegan and vegetarian only.
Prior to our events I always asked about attendees special dietary requirements and did cater for them, but even then we found that people often moaned that they didn’t have enough choice. If there only 4 vegetarians and vegans out of 150 they can’t honestly expect the same range of food as carnivores, much of theirs would be wasted.
On the other hand coeliacs and those with real food allergies were very happy to be given food they could actually eat, even if they had little choice.

I've organised a lunchtime event next week and I was planning to order pizzas from a local (excellent) pizza place, supporting local businesses. I'd best check the menu. However work won't be paying, it is the speakers who are paying for this one so they may not have so much say.

A diabetic trying to manage carbohydrates may do just this. Or at least want to have proteins that are familiar to them to avoid taking in too much carbohydrate in an unfamiliar form.

And only a big pile of meat will solve that?! Newly diagnosed diabetics would surely consult an app to work out the carbohydrates?

No. Just no.
You can’t rely on just eating things without bread if you need GF, I for one would end up with a bad stomach for three days if I did this.
Caterers use a lot of bought-in prepared ingredients and many of these include invisible wheat.

For example, much of the prepared raw polenta we buy includes flour to stop it caking. And oats used in GF catering cannot be processed in machinery that has been used for wheat. Even most oven cooked potato products include flour, as do most crumbed products.

It’s hard enough for a diabetic to eat away from home at the best of times without them encountering unfamiliar foods too - unless you see the actual nutritional info you honestly don’t know the breakdown of the food. This applies whether it’s commercially produced or freshly made from scratch.
An app isn’t much use in this situation. Straightforward protein that’s known to you is much simpler.

Come off it. Vegetarian and vegan food isn't any more 'unfamiliar' than your normal work catered omnivorous affair. The protein that's provided at a work event isn't 'straightforward' steak, is it? It's ham sandwiches and spring rolls/ samosas. The ingredients are just as obscure/ transparent as vegetarian and vegan food would be.

'Unfamiliar'

I was thinking more in terms of something simple like a chicken leg as compared with falafel, plant-based "meat" "chicken" or "cheese" where you have no idea of the protein and carb content - and commercially producted vegan food is very highly processed.

Personally I'd rather have a decent cheese sandwich in brown bread that some of the vegan food I've been subjected to in the past. It would be very different if the vegan and vegetarian food was cooked from scratch, but that's unlikely isn't it?
I doubt that @Changedasouting (the person I originally quoted) would be going for the carb rich food that you suggest in any case.

I know this. I know removing bread doesn’t remove gluten.

I’m saying that designing menus that don’t revolve around bread and cake helps a lot of people!

My DC were milk intolerant and at one point suspected gluten intolerant before food allergy labelling, I do understand the complexities of it.

I still think designing food to include as many people as possible is a good thing to do. So many places now avoid nuts, but nut allergy is less common in adults than celiac disease.

I've had many a catered office meeting/ conference buffet and never once been served a chicken leg! Even the 'real' meat at these kinds of things is going to be highly processed. It's not naice ham.

Eating meat puts more carbon in the air than Vegan and veggie food. thats a fact. And it's better for you. Why complain?

Are you for real. More carbon for meat

The vegans will says so, but the processing required expends a considerable amount of fuel and the packaging is often huge, so unless it is all raw food, there is little difference. Soya v grass growing ?

I'm afraid that's absolute bollocks. Even with all of those things taken into account vegetarian, and especially vegan food has a fraction of the effect upon the environment than meat.

Soy is an intensively grown crop, which consumes a lot of water and agrichemicals. It's responsible for deforestation and lack of bio diversity.

Much fashionable vegan food is UPF and the effects that this is having on the human body is becoming more and more clear. To be vegan and not eat it requires a good understanding of nutrition and the time and resources to spend in food preparation.