Huh. Looks like I already answered this question when it was posted a decade ago.
To margaretswimming, who brought this old thread back up - I’m sure some do. I’m personally not, as I’m just barely into “overweight” on the BMI range but should be back in normal range in a few weeks. People use many ways to hide eating disorders but being a vegetarian is not direct evidence of having one.
That’s like asking if it’s rude to have sex in front of a virgin.
It’s rude to eat brains in just about any company, though.
A friend of mine took my girlfriend and me to a restaurant where pretty much everything on the menu is fried meat of one variety or another. I’m vegetarian and have been all my life, and I wasn’t offended by this - not even when they ordered goat brains, which was one of the specialities of this place. My girlfriend tried it and said it was like eating meringue - and now she can’t eat meringue any more. 
I think it’s easier to just stay away from vegetarians. 
I think it would be worse if the meat were liver.:eek:
Just what do vegetarian zombies eat, anyway?
Any vegetarian actually getting offended by the “rudeness” of someone eating normally in front of them is probably both a rarity as well as the type of person you wouldn’t want to share a meal with anyway. You made the choice to live an alternate lifestyle, not me. You can deal with me eating meat or fucking leave.
Wow, when I wrote this OP my daughter was a few months old. She’s now starting middle school.
Graaiiiins.
I try to avoid eating with those types after the first time.
Faux tooooooofuuuuuuuuuuu braaaaaaaains?
Vegans/vegetarians who put up a stink about others eating meat in their presence do nothing but give all other vegans/vegetarians a bad reputation. I dated a vegan for 4 years and I am not even close to being vegetarian and I certainly ate meat in front of her basically every time we ate together. It was never, ever an issue for her. The only real impact it had on me was how it limited the choices we had for restaurants we could visit that could meet her dietary needs. But there are some delicious vegetarian restaurants out there, in the right areas. For any Michigan Dopers, the Ann Arbor area has some fabulous veggie restaurants that any meat eater would be satisfied eating at.
zombie or no
it’s rude to fuss about food in front of others if they aren’t fussing as much as you.
it’s rude to control conversations.
I’m not vegetarian. But I think there’s a particular rationale for vegetarianism that’s worth considering: folks who are vegetarian for moral/ethical reasons aren’t just making a lifestyle choice, they believe they’re avoiding cruelty and violence. If you want to get in their heads, you don’t want to imagine whether an orthodox Jew would object to your eating ham, you want to imagine whether you’d object to your dinner companion slapping his child in the face while you ate.
Chances are, if that happened, you wouldn’t just chalk it up to different parenting styles and consider it rude to say anything. You’d consider the dinner companion’s choice to be unethical and deeply problematic, and you’d appreciate it if your dinner companion would stop.
And if that happened in a country in which slapping children were a socially acceptable form of child discipline, then you’d appreciate the conflicting emotions that an ethical/moral vegetarian feels when watching you eat meat.
Go to a nice Italian place – plenty of meatless options for anyone who cares not to eat meat and the meat in most dishes is secondary. My wife is not a vegetarian, but eats no red meat and very little of the other meats. We go out and she always finds something she wants and could care less if I have a steak.
Our daughter-in-law is a vegetarian, so whe we go out with them, we let her choose the restaurant.
nm
Wow…a blast of pure Justhink after how many years of no exposure? I think I need to go get immunized somehow now…
The only way I could see it as rude is if the smell of cooked meat makes her physically ill. I know there’s certain foods that the smell of makes me want to be sick.
This episode of a long running documentary series covers the topic of vegetarian zombies’ diet.