Rude Comments

^^haha!

yeah... i had forgotten how hard it is to be a vegetarian while living with omnivores. but my lover (who is also a vegetarian) and i just moved in with his dad (cross country move, gotta have somewhere to stay) and he just really doesn't seem to get the not eating meat thing. like, he cooks everything on cast iron skillets... the ones you never wash? and he was offended when i bought us new cooking pans so i wouldn't have to cook food in something that still had animal residue on it. i still eat eggs and dairy, as long as it is hormone, antibiotic and cruelty free; but i can't imagine eating anything that has come into contact with meat. just seeing it laying in the fridge makes me wanna hurl. and if he doesn't quit asking me when i'm gonna make him some hotdogs, i'm gonna scream.

ok, rant over, lol! it is totally annoying though!

 

one of my friends always checks whatever it is that she's offering to me for gelatine.

Some people are just like that, I mean theres this kid i know, he keeps going on about how much he loves meat and how weird i am for not liking it. I restrained from the retaliation.

 

"Get a new face, clothes, drug of choice and ill think about dating you"

That one still hurts a bit.

 

Intolerance sucks...no matter what side of the fence you're on. I'm a carnivore, and not exactly by choice. I have a combination of celiac and legume allergies, which makes a vegan diet impractically difficult (unless I went full fructo, which it's very difficult to get a balanced protein profile diet that way) and I get harassed for eating meat. I've actually have veggies try to 'introduce' me to tofu by refusing to buy or cook anything else....I do not like hives, rashes, or anaphylactic shock. I've gone so far as to keep a 'kosher' set of cookware (when I kept hardcore vegan friends) and cater to their own food needs, but the return was never reciprocated.

The world is just as unfriendly to vegetarians as it is to carnivores...if you eat almost exclusively meat, with some fruit, veg, non-leguminous nuts and berries, you're treated as oddly as someone who eats tofu....so I empathize with the harassment and stupid 'bs' that people have to put up with.

It's supposedly easier to live on a meat based diet than a vegetable based one....HA!. try finding something without gluten (wheat, rye, barley products), peanuts, beans, (including soy products)....it's like trying to find something without meat/dairy products.

 

Well about half of the people on my college course are farmers which i thought would be difficult but it's great. They just can't get over the concept of a vegan who doesn't mind going out shooting..
In fact, what annoys me most about being vegan is that people assume it is for the animal rights side of it, although when i started out i couldn't care less about the animals. I must say i have become more sensitive to animals since, but it still wouldn't affect my diet.

 

I used to get"are you still a health food nut?"What're ya gonna do?

 

yeah, so last night (right after i posted on this thread) i walk out of the bedroom, to find that my lover's father (the carnivore) has cooked chicken and rice or something like that. great! that's fine, i don't give a shit what he eats. but he procedes to say "doesn't that smell good? don't you want some of this?" i'm getting tired of that line.

then a couple hours later, i go into the kitchen, and his greasy chicken covered spoons and cooking utensils are all over the stove top, pooling in chicken nasty... and his bones that he ate the meat off of were on the plate on the counter. i bout threw up. so then this morning i washed all the dishes except his (i do most of the kitchen work, since i'm unemployed), and left him a note explaining that i respect his choices to eat meat, but i hope he can respect my choice not to touch anything related to his eating of meat. ugh, then he comes in and says "i didn't expect you to clean up my dishes... but don't you want to chew on the bones, they're good!" i don't know what more to do to get it across (without being mean and bitchy) that it's not funny or cute or nice when he teases me about not eating meat and such.

 

Sounds like he's just giving you what he thinks is joking around.Might be easier if you laughed it off.

 

NTH, I have to agree that I think that's a bit...rude? I mean I'm a carnivore, and that seemed a bit disgusting. I suppose since I've been involved in food service, the sanitation issues alone bug me, but I can certainly see how it'd be annoying, especially trying to 'talk you into it'....it's kind of like 'well, what can I do to get you to give up your morals'. See...the thing with people like that is they really don't quit...the vegans I lived with were the same way, and they'd try to talk me into sampling their food. It finally stopped when I asked which one of them was going to pay my medical bills (or funeral expenses) for me to 'try this yummy tofu and peanut butter based smoothie just once'. I compiled a list of things I would not eat under any circumstances, and why. I hated to border on being rude about it, but I'd had enough. NTH, I hope you don't have to sit them down and tell them WHY this bothers you, and they let up on their own, but if worse comes to worse...(shrugs)

Unfortunately for Shirley, a lot of vegans will get the 'doing it for animal rights' assumption painted to them, because so many vegans have made such %$#%# about themselves about it...but I will say that if I offended with my comments, I was speaking purely from my own experience with somewhat militant and uncool vegans, who were wound way too tight, and tried to cram their food choices down people's throats. (literally as far as metaphorically) I have nothing against the respectable sort who leave my plate alone, and I leave theirs alone.(which you seem to be much like me- stay out of my food, and I'll stay out of yours) If offense was taken, I do humbly apologize. (bows)

Peace everybody!

 

A lot of old farts look at these things and think "dumb hippie shit," "fad" or "rebellion" rather than taking seriously the belief system or reasoning behind it, be it health or ethics. I know when I was questioning whether or not I should remain vegan, my mother did everything she could to make me feel guilty when I rejected her food or told her what was wrong with it. When I called her on it, she would hold that she's not saying anything and shrug with that weepy look on her face that says, "you're rejecting your upbringing so you don't love me anymore."
She hates that I don't drink a lot of milk anymore. She's obsessed with the "3 glasses a day" rule and if I refuse it, she tells me I'm going to get osteoporosis. I ask her what the cavemen did.
I realize it's not on the level you guys are at, but I can kind of see where you're coming from... It really is disrespectful, but I guess it's just in some people's nature to criticize what they don't understand (or better yet, what they won't accept).

 

Yeah, the guilt trips are the utter worst.

 

Thanks for all the responses so far, everyone, and I am glad to know many other people can understand where I am coming from. I just find repetetive comments about my food annoying, especially when I try my best to mind my business about the food they eat.

NTH, I knew someone who acted very similarly to who you are describing. He would always laugh and tell me "there is cow" in whatever I was eating, even if it was an obviously vegetarian food. He also would shove non-vegetarian food in my face and ask me questions like, "isn't that yummy?" I found out he tried to go vegetarian before I knew him but quit, and a while after all of the teasing went on, he tried to go vegetarian again. His insecurity and guilt was apparently causing all of his immaturity.

 

thanks to everyone who posted in regards to my rant, lol! especially you Born25YearsTooLate....

i'm just at my wits end. we're living here with him, and i'm extremely grateful for that, as we have very little money, and it's one of the only feasible financial situations. but i am working my ass off not to express disgust at so many of the ways he lives, and i'm getting nothing in return, except teasing.

while i think at the heart of it (he really is a nice guy, we just have personalities that have a hard time meshing), he is just trying to joke around and relate to me, it's really starting to offend me. i don't tease him about eating meat, and i don't tell him daily how bad for him it is to drink a 6 pack of mt. dew....

yet daily i get some comment about how he has a great recipe for chicken i should try. or there's pork and beans in the fridge. or he has plenty of spaghetti sauce with italian sausage, i don't need to "go to the trouble" of making my own (which i like to do, as i am mostly italian, lol!). or he'll ask if i mind if he eats some of the food i made for the whole household... and then if i mention there's tofu in it, he'll say "uh oh... i shouldn't eat this, it might make me a vegitarian, or a hippie." and the chicken bones thing was seriously this testing push... how far can i pick on her before she yells at me and i can pretend to be the victim of the mean old vegetarian who can't handle it that i eat meat. ugh!

i think i am just going to tell him the next time he asks if he can eat what i cooked... "you can eat whatever i cook, whenever you want, as long as you quit making such rude comments to me, and clean up your meat shit as soon as you're done cooking it so i don't even have to touch or look at it, because it goes against my beliefs, and is really quite rude. if you have a problem with eating any of the things that i use in food preparation, let me know so that i can warn you ahead of time that something has tofu or whatever in it, but please quit being so rude about my beliefs, because i'm trying really hard to accept yours." god, you'd think i was dealing with a 6th grader, not a 60 year old man.

 

People really are surprising in just how obnoxious they can be....But then again, I should know, I've had occasion to make myself REALLY annoying to people that %@#%$ me the hell off. I appreciate the thanks, NTH, and I hope this gets cleared up.

Sounds like he's afraid he might 'like' some of the food you make....which being Italian, and presumably raised right, I'm betting you can make some mean mean food...good luck!

 

Yeah, that's one of the problems... People think that just because you like veggie foods, you'll have to change your whole system and live on them forever and ever. Or maybe he thinks it's contagious :tongue:

 

people are just strange.

 

A lot of people think of a meal as a special ceremony where you share food, love, brotherhood and sisterhood. In a lot of traditional cultures it is very rude to refuse food offered to you, people take it as an insult that you are to good to eat and sit in a circle of ceremony with them.

In our modern world meals have lost the sacred value in a lot of fast paced cultures but I’m sure the old world feelings of ceremony still burn deep down with a lot of people especially at the family dinner table.

A lot of the “rude comments” probably come from the circle of people you are supposed to be eating with feel offended because you wont eat “with” them and be a part of a sacred age old ceremony with them.

One of my friend was an anthropologist and a vegetarian she was working on a Indian reservation and was invited to dinner one evening, she went but refused to eat the meat stew..
They told her to get out and latter that night the elders came to her home and said that the girl who made the dinner was related to the chef and not to partake in food with them was a very big insult and she will have to leave the reservation now..

She had to leave her 2-year job or be fired.

I try to eat everything I am offered I have had to eat some very strange things in 3rd world countries but I think if it is offered in good heart it will be good for the body and not hurt you.

The thing I have the worst time with is cheap beer!! I dread it every time someone offers me a Budweiser or Coors.:-(

 

Interesting thoughts, Z.

I can see the reason in it, but the question would be 'how to avoid that reaction'?

 

i know what you mean, z... there are a lot of cultural and traditional (not to mention religious) taboos about refusing to eat certain things offered by a host. while i never want to offend anyone, and i too believe in food offered with love is good for the body and spirit.... meat physically makes me ill. it has been 11 years since i've become a vegetarian, and i've tried to reintroduce fish to my diet, and spent the intire time very very ill. i quit eating it, and i felt better! my body just doesn't want animal flesh in it!

i think the issue going on with my housemate/landlord/lover's father is that he truly believes that it is natural to eat the flesh of animals, and that one cannot be truly a part of the natural way of life if one does not eat meat. he has a very difficult time accepting viewpoints that are different than his, and this is very different from what he sees as "right and natural." the other thing, i think, is that he's got this macho manly thing going on, and i don't think he feels like it's "manly" to eat tofu and not eat meat. and as i cook for us most of the time, he ends up eating "unmanly" tofu lasagna without realizing it has tofu in it, and ENJOYING it, so then he looks like a hypocrite when he complains about tofu. it's kind of funny!

maybe someday we can all live in peace and harmony and love each other and respect each other's differences? one can only hope and believe!