Ir seems to be a combination of disregarding the status quo and somehow challenging them by one’s mere holding of other values to them that one is attempting to guilt them because they like eating animals. Plus, at least in the Americas, meat-eating is a strong part of the definition of masculinity. Certainly in American sitcoms, where they rhapsodize about steaks and burgers as if the shows were subsidized by the Meat Council.
However, as a vegan I am more bothered by finding anything possible to eat in a restaurant than worrying about what others want me to eat. As for other things I merely dislike, such as aniseed or mint flavours, I wouldn’t bother pretending I have an allergy. There are other ways to enforce one’s preference.
When I was about seven, at a school-party they insisted I should try some lime jelly: I knew well that jelly was revolting, and explained it would make me sick. They re-insisted, and I said no; again and I took some. I then threw up all over the floor and them and the party like Krakatoa on crack.
My mom does this to me constantly, but no one else does. I think a lot of it for her and for other people who do this isn’t necessarily them being high-handed jerks, but they really don’t grasp that other people might eat differently than they do.
My mom is the perfect example. When she visits, mom usually takes over the kitchen. For her, food is love. And the more decadent it is and the more of it we eat, the more we must love her. Unfortunately, our eating habits diverged significantly when I met my husband. In our household, we eat mostly vegetarian (no problems with meat - we just don’t happen to eat it much). Also, I’m trying to lose weight, so I don’t eat large portions or heavy food. Additionally, we try very hard to eat family meals. That means that at 6:30, my husband, our preschooler and the baby (even before she could eat solids) all come to the table. Even if my husband and I don’t eat, we sit down together, have some water or another beverage and talk about our day. For some reason, she can’t wrap her head around our eating habits.
She comes from an age when children ate first, were conveniently gotten out of the way, then the adults ate adult food. She doesn’t really get that we expect our children to be part of our meals, eat the same thing we do (as opposed to Dinty Moore chicken & dumplings) and don’t want them to get accustomed to junk and constant treats. So she just doesn’t get that there are certain foods I really don’t like and that my kids really might not like and regularly attempts to impose them on us. Which is why I often stage a coup when she visits and take over the kitchen.
Mr. Athena is constantly throwing out food his mother gives him. She just can’t seem to grasp that our eating habits are about as far from hers as you can get and even when she makes stuff Mr. Athena likes, he often doesn’t want to eat it because it’s sugary and fatty and he’s trying to cut back.
He’s tried to tell her, but after the 50th time he’s said “Mom, I don’t want your burritos/sandwiches/cookies/whatever” and having her pout or push it on him or both, he just takes it, brings it home and throws it away. It’s too bad, really, but man the stuff she makes is unappetizing (at least to us). Everything comes out of a can or a box, nothing is made with fresh ingredients, and it’s uniformly bland.
Plus, I haven’t eaten a thing she’s made since I watched her lick her fingers and smooth down the toppings on deviled eggs with her spit-covered fingers. In fact, I try to block that memory altogether. Now I’m grossed out again.
Egg-and-dairy-eating vegetarian here, and my father-in-law has more than once served me food with animal-based stuff in it. Intentionally. One time he made a point of crowing about his special just-for-me veg pasta dish. I started feeling sick and once I got home (they live close by) I ran for the toilet and threw up. Meanwhile the phone rang; it was my FIL, telling my husband that he’d cooked the pasta in chicken broth and put broth in the sauce, and gee, ‘guess she’s not much of a vegetarian.’ My husband yelled at him and hung up. I can excuse a mistake but not intent, and rarely trusted or ate much of anything he made again.
My MIL made some truly disgusting food and a few edible items (hardboiled eggs, for example). Once as we were about to embark on a holiday visit the children complained that she always pushed them over and over to have some <disgusting food-like item>. I told them to just say politely, “No, thank you, I don’t care for any.” “But then she’ll ask us again. And again.” “And you can repeat the exact same response just as many times and just as politely.”
Depends on the people. Many don’t bug me or don’t even notice what I’m eating; some are all up in my business or even seem determined to pressure me into eating something I’ve already politely declined.
And it depends on what you avoid - vegetarianism, say, is pretty unexceptional to the majority of meat-eaters these days. But I avoid sweeteners, grains, and vegetable fats - and obviously this seems downright shocking in our culture where most people get the majority of their daily calories from those things. I don’t advertise what I don’t eat, I just don’t eat it, but people often ask questions which I’ll answer by saying ‘I try not to eat sugar’, etc. I’ve found a lot of people seem offended that I have judged the foods they like to eat and rejected them. Tough titty, my choices are just that and have nothing to do with you.
I also get a lot of remarks from the many people who think saturated fat or animal products are bad for the body, as I don’t hide my heavy consumption of cream, butter, bacon, and fatty cuts of meat. It’s not like I stand on my chair and hold forth about the minutia of my diet, it’s that people seeing what I eat every day (often some unusual things) seems to invite conversation (‘what is that?’ ‘don’t you know you’re going to clog your arteries with all that cream?’ etc)
Sweet Jesus are you serious!? Although my future MIL doesn’t spray down her counter tops or her work area after she’s handled raw meat…on the basis that she “doesn’t like chemicals”. Okay, I can respect that…so I got her the 7th Generation disinfecting spray and she still doesn’t :smack:
Honestly, I hear commentary on my diet and my SO’s diet pretty frequently at potluck style stuff. Like if we make a grain dish, it’ll be with brown rice, whole wheat pasta, or quinoa. Inevitably half the crowd loves it (and eats it till its gone) and the other half is all “Ooooo, why (that grain) why not (that white grain)? Why no meat/so many vegetables/so little oil/etc?” People are always baffled - but not disrespectful. Honestly it boils down to ignorance. People who are ignorant of the choices they are making are wide-eyed at people who tailor what they put into their bodies - be they vegetarians, healthy omnivores, or paleo diets.
Heh. That reminds me of my uncle. After a mighty snowball fight a gaggle of us cousins came in the kitchen door, where we saw my uncle slathering a metric ton of tartar sauce onto a single fish stick. My sister, who somehow managed to get into her early teens without ever coming across tartar sauce, asked what it was. He answered something like “Tartar sauce, so the fish doesn’t taste fishy.”
My sister, asked: “Why did you cook fish if you don’t want to taste fish?”
I’m so glad you posted this, because it reminds me that you posted a thread ages ago with this story and I wondered at the time what your FIL’s reaction was when he found out that when he called full of glee at having tricked you into eating an animal product, you had your head over the toilet. Was he remorseful at all?
I’m pretty sure he’s incapable of remorse, and I mean that literally. My husband yelled at him, IIRC hubby said he kind of stammered and tried to justify what he did, and then my husband hung up. (I’ve pretty much been very chilly to him since then. Any time I’ve tried to soften up, eventually something happens that shows how I was stupid to do so.)
I forgot to add earlier that I’ve also had the usual assortment of smartass remarks (like “I’m a member of PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals, lolz”), the “but why?!” questioning, the “omg you cannot be getting enough protein/iron/whatever, I have to educate you on nutrition”, and so on.
Along the same vein as WhyNot’s post, my wife and I often throw dinner parties for friends. I’m a private chef as a side business and I just love to cook and try out new ideas on people I trust to give me feedback before I spring them on clients.
What pisses me off is when I ask guests a week or more in advance about dietary restrictions, food sensitivities, dislikes, etc., send people the menu I’m planning and then have someone scrape the duxelles off the steak because they don’t like mushrooms, etc.
Look, folks, I don’t care if you don’t like mushrooms, but if you’d bothered to let me know I would have made something else.
It happens to me very rarely, but it’s memorable when it does. I have had people ‘trick’ me into eating both meat and wheat - the latter a chef who didn’t ‘believe’ in coeliac disease. Otherwise my friends and acquaintances go out of their way to accommodate me.
Funnily enough, nobody’s ever tricked me into dairy, probably since the main effect - copious obnoxious farts - is as bad for them as for me.
I find it most often happens with foods that are usually liked. I loath pineapple, and people find this baffling, so they will go ‘really’ and sometimes try to ‘find out why’.
I think it happens most with family or where someone feels bad because they made something with the offending item in it because they didnt know.
“And it’s not wrong to say, ONE TIME, have you ever tried it?”
I think thats a foodie perspective, and of course, they generally have been asked ‘have you tried it one time’ like 1 zillion times because everyone thinks they’re the very first person to check that.
Its not really anyones job to convince an adult to try foods they’re not interested in, regardless of the reason.
I believe we’ve had Dopers who say they do this – someone once said you’re obligated to try something so you don’t offend your host.
Another winner said that even if you get sick (vomitting, diarrhea, etc), you should STILL eat it, because it’s not worth offending your host’s feelings if you refuse to eat what’s given to you. :rolleyes: (Said Doper proudly told us how she spent the night in the bathroom after visiting a friend)
Fortunately I wasn’t raised like this – my mother has a very delicate stomach and often used to get sick after meals growing up. So she never really forced me to ate anything I truly hated when I was a kid. (I mean, I didn’t get special meals, but it was more, “hey, you eat or you don’t get anything else.”) When my cousin and his wife came for Thanksgiving, we found out his wife didn’t like turkey, so my dad made her a steak. (And no, T. didn’t ask us to do so, and was basically, “I can’t believe you did that – you shouldn’t have done that!”)
I’d think it would be very rude of me to tell you I just don’t like mushrooms, and I would have quietly scraped them off the top and eaten the steak, and then you’d be all thinking what a rude asshole I was for trying to be polite about your mushrooms.
Well, if he called and asked if there was anything I don’t eat, I wouldn’t have thought of mushrooms - I’d have said I don’t eat shrimp, I guess, because shrimp can be the main dish. And it’s not like I don’t ever like mushrooms, I just don’t tend to like them much. But I wouldn’t have gone through and said “Well, I don’t really like polenta - I much prefer risotto, if that’s a choice. I only like broccoli when it’s roasted or raw, really. I also don’t really care for steaks besides filet. Please no pork loin - tenderloin is okay unless you dry it the hell out. Make sure any mashed potatoes have a lot of flavor and aren’t gluey. I don’t like storebought cookies, either.” I mean, there’s “do you have any dietary needs or things you won’t eat?” and then there’s “Act like I’m a short order cook”.
