Work sustainability policy dictating crap food

[ThisBrickOtter]

So, my employer has gone on a sustainability bender (don't look at this happening at the same time as the expensive and resource consuming rebrand). This now means for our dept get together, which usually has food, only vegan or vegetarian options are available. This is really annoying me.

I'm a pro thought for the environment type but my choices don't extend to meat (I don't find the vegan argument convincing, I do the vegetarian one, but got ill when tried that). I consume what meat I can afford, thoughtfully.

I do have an unusual relationship with food. Part neurodiversity (this extends to authority at times, something I keep an eye on!), part poor childhood. I think this might be contributing to my reaction.

But yep, I feel angry that my food choices are being taken away. Last meeting I was at where they did this, only the sweet food got completely finished. The savory vege sandwiches and fallafel was picked at. Same with the fake chicken. The policy is resulting in more food waste, not less. So that annoys me too.

I have no issue with people's personal choices, but this feels like being lectured to about drinking but a very drunk uncle.

AIBU feeling this way?

i had assumed OP meant that following a vegetarian diet made her ill. One meal now and again won't kill anyone (unless it's laced with arsenic of course)

FWIW our canteen has one meat option per day and 3 veggie, at least one is vegan. When they announced it all the usual suspects got in a snit. Bottom line: more people than ever are eating in there, all the meals are good and we have a "salad/anti-pasti" bar that uses up leftovers well.

You used to carry around emergency beef sandwiches in case you were presented with a free cheese sandwich?

In my experience, it depends on when someone became veggie and for what reason.

One friend of mine has been veggie all her life for religious reasons. She would not want to eat meat substitutes.

Another friend turned veggie purely because she hated meat. She too would not want to eat meat substitutes.

Third friend who turned veggie for ethical reasons surrounding the killing of animals would happily eat meat substitutes.

I worked in a place where many colleagues were vegetarian or vegan and a lot of the catering for events were at least vegetarian. I eat most things and some veggie options are great although I draw the line at fake meat, it makes me vomit. However many of the options at these events were pretty awful and the best food got noshed well before I got to it, it bred resentment in some of the staff.

I saw it as just one event and several of us, veggies and vegans included took in somethings we liked to eat for ourselves just in case the nice stuff ran out before we had a chance to get to it.

To be honest, yes, I think YABU to be 'angry' about this. Having an occasional meal that isn't your favourite food isn't taking choice away from you in any meaningful sense.

i had assumed OP meant that following a vegetarian diet made her ill.

I assumed that, too. These mysterious illnesses only seem to affect people who want to eat meat but feel guilty about it.

We have this at work in our department too. Annoyingly it isn't a company-wide policy, but a VP in our department has decided to impose it as she feels quite strongly about it. Therefore any food provided (which isn't often as they are quite stingy) is vegan, including milk for tea and coffee which is oat milk. Desserts/biscuits they just don't offer at all.

This happened at our work, the default has been changed to vegan food. I don't mind really because I like all food, but I did giggle at the one clever person who thought to put 'meat option required' in the dietary requirements part of the event MS Form and got a very nice meaty lunch provided just for him.

The processes the original product goes through to make it taste like a bit of tandoori chicken/cheese is worse environmentally than meat/dairy production.

No it's not and this has been debunked ad nauseam.

Doesn't help with whether the person likes it or not mind you, but a work place is under no obligation to provide meat, or any food for that matter, to employees if it doesn't want to.

The employers can choose to offer what food they want or none but don’t dress it up as more sustainable if it isn’t.
Cheese - main ingredient milk.
Cathedral city plant based ingredients below - rice, coconut, bamboo fibre won’t be from uk.
It also make things more complex for people with allergies or health issues. Cheese sandwich on buffet - most people know if safe or not for them obviously pass if you are dairy intolerant. Plant cheese - lots pass as no idea what’s in it or choose to avoid processed fake food which results in food waste which goes against original aim.

Your choices aren't being taken away, so yabvu there.

But otherwise I get it. I'd be irritated. Your neurodiversity means you're more limited than average in the food you can eat. Whether other people understand or find that logical is immaterial. It's not very inclusive to limit the types of food provided without considering the dietary needs of employees. And it's obviously not sustainable for them to provide food that doesn't get eaten and only ends up contributing to more food waste.

Agree with the poster upthread who said it's probably going to end up as a cost cutting exercise.

The dairy industry is so overwhelmingly bad for the environment (greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, soil degradation, water usage, to name a few) that I would imagine any comparison to flying in ingredients from elsewhere (that will be used for many things besides dairy substitutes) barely touches the sides.

Neither do I. Bar sausages and Linda McCartney pies!

🤣 no! But just as wanky.

Oddly enough, food I'm not used to, can. I tend to avoid overly processed and need to be careful what I eat. When there's a range I can cobble something together. Usually a ton of chicken a protein is not something that triggers the stomach stuff.

I'm actually thinking of bringing a sausage sandwich.

This is so amazingly naive Im not surprised the environment is fucked.

cows need food. They don’t just eat grass. Some of it is grown in U.K. some of it isn’t.

cows belch out a huge amount of greenhouse gases just by existing.

Then add in all the supplements and antibiotics needed to keep cows healthy, energy used to process milk and make it into cheese etc etc

why don’t you try comparing carbon footprint for dairy vs fake dairy?

Good idea. I'll try to sneak a photo. It kills me seeing perfectly good food going to waste. Well, bar the Solent Green esque chicken. That stuff will be used to build shelters post apocalypse.

@DoreenonTill8 I’ll do the honours 😋. It's ooonnly one meal! Surely you can eat vegan for one meal?????!!!

I'm an ex-veggie and really like fake meat. I think I'm an anomaly though! I'd be really happy with Quorn ham sandwiches, instead of ham sandwiches.

However, mock meat is an acquired taste. A lot of people, veggie, vegan or not, do not like it. The texture is a bit strange so I understand that. It seems thoroughly pointless to provide food that the majority don't want.

As someone upthread said, it's an excuse to cut costs. No point in paying for a buffet if no one is going to eat it.

It made me depressed. Same with my brother. I think there's an assumption that everyone's body type is the same. It's not. I seem to eat a lot of meat protein and when I'm ill, will go nuts for it. Getting cravings. I like things like tofu, but when my body wants meat, it wants meat.

I have a stomach issue that plays up, like if I go on holiday, it's not happy. Food it's not used to, unhappy. I've found I've got through that things in the past by mainly eating the chicken!

I’d bring a pack up with the food you like. I worked at a university and the catering was so poor that I brought a lunch for years.

Do you not see that you being unable to "cobble together a meal" from what's on offer is no different to a vegetarian being unable to "cobble together a meal" when what's normally on offer is a load of meat as the de facto standard?

Non veggies and vegans have had choice for years, and now on the odd occasion the tables are turned it's suddenly an outrageous step on your right to choose. Just like they've got on with it for this long, maybe you can just get on with it for one meal every so often.

according to the carbon trust, compared to beef mince, Quorn mince has 4% of the carbon footprint, 6% of the land-use footprint and 8% of the water footprint.
compared to a pork sausage, a Quorn sausage has 11% of the carbon footprint, 21% of the land-use footprint and 39% of the water footprint.

Hardly. Scrutiny of a company’s carbon footprint is increasing, not decreasing.

But, OP YANBU. These sorts of stunts absolutely get on my tits. I attended a course at an engineering firm and it transpired they’d gone meat free and of course the sandwiches and sides were absolutely dire, laden with carbs and not particularly healthy. I couldn’t leave to get food as there wasn’t time so spent the afternoon with a rumbling stomach & of course good luck if you’re gluten free.

Veggies and vegans like to moan that now you can understand how they feel, but I don’t willingly restrict my diet to a minority of food. If you are going to do that, or are forced to through allergies, of course you’re going to be offered limited options.