Quite often when I go out I’m not drinking alcohol, and one simple piece of advice was, when accepting a drink from someone (like if you’re buying rounds), to ask for ‘a Coke’ (or whatever) rather than, as most people tend to do, saying ‘just a Coke’ and sounding like you want to be persuaded.
I agree about avocados, just prefer them dead plain so I can actually enjoy the taste of them =) Avocado smeared on toast is yummy =)
I’m not trying to ram seafood down your throat, or even trying to convince you to eat it. I’m just pointing out that the “it tastes fishy” reason you give is odd to a lot of people.
I understand that, but “I don’t like it because of how it tastes” should be sufficient. That’s all.
I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome and these days it thankfully isn’t a problem, but it was a huge problem through my teens and twenties. Certain foods triggered it and I went through a lot of painful trial and error to work out what I needed to isolate from my diet. Quite early on it was obvious that my beloved tomatoes had to go… while I could eat a small amount of fresh tomato with minor effects, anything containing tomato paste was a disaster waiting to happen. You would not believe the efforts people would go to in order to make me eat tomatoes because no matter what I said, what they heard was “I don’t like tomatoes” and they would do their utmost to show me I was wrong. Eventually I resorted to saying I was allergic because it was easier and people respected it. If you say “I have an intolerance of tomatoes”, they don’t think it is serious. People can still wind me up by saying things like “Oh, we can’t have that, Cazzle doesn’t like it” because it trivialises it down as though it is nothing more than fussiness (and “Way to be a killjoy with your fussiness, Cazzle. We can’t have that because of you”) and completely ignores the fact that painful gastric distress is what I’m being fussy about avoiding.
I’ve had people hide tomatoes in things and serve it to me so they can gloat afterwards that I ate it and enjoyed it, again ignoring the fact that I LOVE tomatoes and only avoid them because they upset my stomach. If I get a stomach upset after I’ve been told about what was hidden in my food then there’s eye-rolling and “You were fine until you knew”. Grr.
People are jerks about food. Even good, otherwise-likeable people are jerks about food.
I love how you’ve had to defend your food dislikes in a goddamned thread about how people make others defend their food dislikes. Good job, guys!
Actually, no, I wouldn’t. When my parents grew up, EVERY adult drank coffee. The only difference was how they took it. And EVERY adult drank coffee all day long, including after dinner. When I was growing up, just about every family had a percolator coffee pot sitting over the pilot light on the stove, to keep warm. Offering coffee was a part of the greeting made to everyone who stopped in.
I love coffee, but it irritates the hell out of my gut. My brother has Crohn’s, and one of his problem foods is coffee too. One day, about five years or so ago, he reached his limit when my mother AGAIN offered him coffee. He asked her if he’d EVER, in his lifetime, drunk coffee. She had to stop and think. This is her beloved son, remember. And the answer is, no, he’s tried coffee a couple of times, he doesn’t like the taste, and he hates the reaction to it. I’m still trying to get her to wrap her head around the notion that while I like coffee, I don’t like the reaction. Preferably without hurting her feelings.
If you know its a normal courtesy though, why get grumpy about it? Its not like ‘no thank you’ takes a huge amount of effort.
Otara
I DON’T get grumpy about it, unless my “no thank you” is met with insistence that I simply MUST try some of this or that. And having someone sneak ingredients into common food is NOT normal courtesy, it’s a control issue. People who can’t accept “no thanks” as an answer are the problem here. Also, it’s really not courteous to keep offering (or insisting) a food that you know that your guest can’t or won’t eat.
My mother knows (or did know, before the Alzheimer’s got so bad) that both my brother and myself CAN’T drink coffee without getting sick later on. Yet she insists on putting on a fresh pot for us when we visit, and then looks hurt if we don’t drink it up while loudly proclaiming how good it is, because she got out the expensive coffee just for us.
I didnt say sneaking food was a common courtesy, I said offering coffee was.
Your story wasnt very clear that the real issue was insistence rather than offering. Edit: And I disagree that a single offer during a visit is discourteous when its clearly habit.
Otara
Sigh. I’m a vegetarian. I have been for, I don’t know, 15+ years. And yet, every single freaking time I have a meal with my in-laws, my FIL offers me a serving of the meat course. No? Well, would you like some gravy? A simple, “no, thank you” is all I ever say, but it gets really old. Also, the lectures about how I’m not as hardcore as the Jains are a little tiresome. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but I could live without it.
Yup. I’ve been with my husband for over 20 years, but my in-laws - even a sister-in-law who’s switched between diets like vegan, macrobiotic, raw foodist, eat-per-your-blood-type, etc. - seem constantly surprised that I don’t eat seafood, for instance. Really, except for the first year that they knew me, I’ve been a dairy-and-egg-eating vegetarian, no animal broth, no seafood, no none of that. So acting surprised about it is kind of getting old. I mean, I see them several times a year at a minimum, so it’s not like we haven’t seen each other in forever. Oh, and one recent Christmas Eve, the inlaws forgot that their only grandson and I are vegetarian, and we got nothing to eat for dinner; they were just serving a big bowl of - seafood-laden - pasta for their traditional meal. Previous times, there’s been a small serving of vegetarian pasta.
It’s like an old boss of mine who has celiac disease, as does his daughter. That means no wheat, oats, barley, or rye, or any products containing substances from them. One Christmas, I made him homemade vanilla extract using potato-only vodka and a vanilla bean, so he could have a trusted bottle of the stuff for baking at home. His direct boss got him a - wheat-based - cookie assortment.
It just feels rude after a while. Not quite like offering a recovering alcoholic a glass of wine, but close. It’s all of the ceremony of being a polite host, but none of the actual thought.
Ugh! I LOVE coffee, but I can only have decaf because caffeine triggers my seizures. At first it didn’t bother me, (I could even have espresso!), but nowadays any caffeine sets them off. So my sympathies, Lynn.
(My grandfather – I inherited from him – used to bring his own coffee with him to gatherings)
“It just feels rude after a while.”
But it usually isnt because its just habit. People sometimes take these things more personally than they need to, particularly when they’re asking people to repeatedly do something extra in order to accommodate their particular needs.
Otara
I think a lot of it relates to where you are, and how “Vegetarian” you are. If you’re just a “I don’t eat meat” kind, then most restaurants (except Bob’s Steak-O-Rama type places) will have something on the menu that you can eat and I’d like to think that most people are OK with that.
But if you’re the “I don’t eat meat, eggs, dairy, non-organic food…” type, then it rapidly becomes a giant, inconvenient pain in the ass for other people to have to accommodate your “weird” (and they are, if no-one else in your social circle shares them) tastes, especially if you’re the kind of Vegetarian who thinks that the popular restaurants that everyone else can afford to eat at (and likes the food at) “aren’t suitable” for whatever special reason of (generic vegetarian) yours.
I know it’s habit. It’s unthinking habit that is not a good way for a host or hostess to make people feel comfortable or welcome, much less cared-about. When you’ve known someone for a decade or two, that’s more than enough time to work on breaking that habit. Sometimes it’s just “please don’t ask me if I want meat/coffee/alcohol” that is the only thing being asked for.
As I’ve mentioned here before, my SO is a lacto-ovo-vegetarian, and has been since, like, '86. He never, and I mean NEVER, makes a deal out of his eating choices. Hell, he told me once about meeting a client at a local steakhouse (client’s choice), and when the client suggested the meeting location, he went, and just ordered and ate a bunch of sides. He also doesn’t mind if I want to eat cook and eat meat in our home. He never brings it up, never makes anyone change restaurant choices because of him, can always find something to eat anywhere he goes.
And yet, when I (not even him, I) have mentioned his vegetarianism to certain of my friends, they almost get offended by his choices. I’ve had to defend his attitude (he doesn’t eat meat because of moral and ethical principles - he considers it close to a form of slavery to use certain animals for pets and others for meat) to good friends of mine who want to argue that if he eats plants, that’s enslaving the plants and therefore his ethical stance is inconsistent and he should just eat meat.
It’s like people LOOK for offense in his existence.
I have colitis or Crohn’s disease (my doctor isn’t really sure).
I control it mostly through strict diet, basically, avoiding foods that rile it up. Heuristically, this means dairy (milk and cheese), eggs, and most fried foods. I am happy to have done without any medications.
People I’ve known for decades still offer me pizza, cheesecake or ice cream and some indignantly ask “WHY NOT?!?” when I decline. They often imply some lack of courage on my part.
I long ago quit getting angry, but I love it when they are religious teetotalers - I offer to eat a slice of pizza if they’ll join me for a glass of bourbon: “My colon for your soul? If you’re not too… afraid?”
I think maybe more than one habit could be broken like getting grumpy at a host when they’re having to do extra work for your particular needs and not getting it totally right.
Im not veggie any more but when I was I tried to take other people into account, as in either live with just eating the side vegetables, or offer to bring something myself.
This is one of those issues where trying to meet people half way can save a lot of grumpiness. Theres more than one way to be rude.
Otara
I agree. We’re slaves to the Neville kitties, though I generally prefer the term “staff”- it sounds better.