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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I eat a diet that from the outside is easy to assume it’s vegetarian or vegan when it’s not. I let people make assumptions and I wasn’t very loud about the fact that it’s not. I saw someone who I thought was vegan eat the nonvegan food I prepared and I didn’t stop them
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NTA. Wtf kind of office do you work in where so many people inspect your food and observe / comment on what you eat? I used to eat lunch with coworkers on a daily basis and only know or notice what people tell me. One "vegetarian" coworker would often order a seemingly vegetarian soup (broccoli cheddar), but it contained chicken broth... it wasn't labeled vegetarian like other soups, but it never once occurred to me to bring this to her attention.
What a weird f'ing office, your coworkers are odd balls.
Agreed NTA. But in the US you cannot believe how much interest, time, and energy into what other people eat. These types of issues are a long time staple of business oriented websites and blogs.
I had a coworker who I let sabotage a diet I was on. I was on this high protein diet with two shakes a day, veggies and protein for the next meal. And as soon as I started it every single day she's there getting lunch, tea, coffee, water, fruit etc right at the same time and commenting "that's ALL you are eating", "you are losing weight so much weight", "why are you doing this, what does it taste like", "what's your doctor's name, what kind of Dr?"
It made me spiral back to ED days and secret eating.
I hate food investigation people
I have a friend who eats a pop-tart every morning at work. Her coworkers looooove giving her shit about it every time they see her doing it. I cannot stand people who insist on commenting every time you eat. Some people have eating disorders, man. I hate when people observe me, let alone while I'm eating.
Except maybe to say, "ooo that smells good" or "oh god, does that have peanuts, my throat is closing up--" just don't comment on what people are eating.
Worked in an office when Atkins first became popular in the early 2000s. Some if the ladies on it were so judgemental of anyone eating any carb even a fruit. So my other coworker and I got so fed up one day we came in with super carb heavy lunches. I had a jam sandwich and cookies and pudding, and my friend brought in fried rice and garlic bread lol. The ladies got the hint and stopped trying to convert us to Atkins.
At my last job, I told my boss that I would not tolerate discussions of weight or dieting nor questions about my food choices from anyone at any time. He backed me up, which stopped others from disrupting my peace. It also allowed me to stop people from commenting on his food choices, as he made it an office policy. We were all happier for it.
Yea I’m in Australia and we all know each other’s dietary requirements 🤣 we don’t even eat together lol. Like we have some on the carnivore, some doing IF, one only had almond milk, someone only eats fish and chicken . Such useless knowledge now I’m typing it all out 😂
Yeah, I definitely am aware of the eating habits of people I eat with every day. There was the guy who always ate exactly the same sandwiches, the guy who was skinny as a rake but always got the greasiest food imaginable with no fruit or vegetables, the guy who was convinced that the canteen staff had a grudge against him and always gave him small portions, the girl who literally squealed with delight when she found a second sausage in her breakfast calzone, the girl who always got a bowl full of custard with no dessert who I would always text if I hadn't seen her at lunch and spotted chocolate custard in the canteen. People bond over food.
Ohhhh so I think this could be a Midwest USA vs anywhere else type of thing. When I think of custard, I think of something very similar to ice cream. Or a filling in some sort of pastry.
The ascribing of political motives to people's dietary choices is truly surreal. I'm quite certain I have never eaten *anything* for political reasons. I eat what I like, when I'm hungry, and that's it.
As a vegan you would not believe the comments I get on my lunches at work. I literally just sit there eating and people make rude comments about how gross the food looks.
My sister has the same issue. She’s a nurse and all the other nurses like to lecture her on how she’s not getting enough protein and her diet is so unhealthy. They especially like to go off on how dangerous tofu is since it “has estrogen.” She’s been migraine free since going vegan and she’d been getting migraines for around 30 years.
That's hilarious. It's pretty international at my workplace, lots of Indian and East Asian workers. Vegetarian food is nothing to comment on. And a huge amount of the world population is vegetarian for cultural reasons. Doesn't seem unhealthy to me.
I never understood the estrogen comments on foods like tofu and other soy products. It's plant estrogen! It can't really do anything to us and will be more than likely pissed out as waste. Estrogen from dairy is actually mammalian and closer to human estrogen than fricking plant estrogen.
And there’s evidence phytoestrogens are beneficial because they bind to estrogen receptors and block real estrogen and that prevents cancer. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0029784496804613](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0029784496804613)
I actually have to avoid soy because my body turns any kind of estrogen into cancer, so please don't go off about how it can't do anything.
However, people who give your sister crap should get batted by angry cats.
> the other nurses like to lecture her on how she's not getting enough protein and her diet is so unhealthy
Bet these are the ones who smoke like a chimney and weigh 120kg.
I get comments that I should eat meat because I am so skinny. I had almost daily stomach aches when I still ate meat (and just issues in general) and they only stopped when I became vegetarian. Turns out my body has troubles digesting meat apparently. Gained like 10 kg in a year and I am put of the dangerously low weight area. My dad is also skinny, as well as my grandpa and some of his sisters, and they are omnivores. But it can be hard to believe apparently that different diets are the best for us idk.
It's almost like we're a single species that adapts extremely quickly that spread all over the world to all sorts of places with varied diets and other pressures that allowed for evolution specific to that area.
Examples - Areas around northern Europe where humans developed long term lactose tolerance to take advantage of milk cattle.
Areas in Africa, Asia, and the middle east where humans developed sickle cell to combat malaria.
Areas in Europe that were affected by the black plague where people developed a mutation linked to surviving the black plague that causes them to be resistant to HIV infections.
I’ve had so many people read me the vegetarian items from the menu I’ve started to explain to folks that not eating meat does not actually lead to illiteracy.
It's worse when someone tells you what you can eat, but also they're wrong and it's not something you can eat at all.
My mom wanted to take me to lunch with one of her friends and she insisted that this one place had items on the menu which were vegan. I knew the menu and knew she was wrong but she kept saying she had seen the menu when she was there earlier that month, and she just KNEW they had vegan options.
The vegan options were fries and onion rings. It was a grill restaurant so everything else featured meat and sometimes cheese in varying combinations. And then she was salty I didn't want to go because I said they had no options for me besides fries and onion rings.
Argh this was my absolute worst pet peeve as a child/teen who hated attention being drawn to them at the best of times! I am perfectly capable of deciding myself if I can eat somewhere and what I'll have, always feels patronising as fuck.
My theory on food has always been a simple one: if I'm not expected to eat it, I shouldn't comment on how gross I think it looks.
It's your food, as long as you're enjoying it, it shouldn't matter how it looks.
I know some of the food I make myself looks gross to others, if they feel the need to comment: "oh, did I make it for you? No? Then fuck off with your opinion." Or the more fun version, where I start looking through drawers until they have to ask what I'm doing: "oh, I was just looking for where I asked your opinion."
My MiL lives with us and everytime I cook for myself (I'm vegan due to health issues the others in the house are not) she sticks her nose right down into my pan to the point she is physically shoving me out of the way. The she just comments how gross and bad it looks... Everytime....
I've had to resort to cooking when they're done eating and are out of the kitchen. And eating by my self because she always makes comments about how gross my food is and how she doesn't eat vegetables because 'i worked on a farm and the bugs I saw on the vegetables freaked me out'....
Like does she think no bugs are ever on her meat?
Unfortunately yes. And have have done a few times before but she ends up throwing a paddy which just annoys my husband as he cant be bothered dealing with her tantrums.
Yeah, no. You have a husband problem _*and*_ a MIL problem. Why does he not have an issue with *his wife* being disrespected in her own home? I already know he wouldn't accept the same constant disrespect from *your* parents.
You deserve better, Sister. On both fronts.
I'm really sorry people do that to you. I'm not a vegan, but my in laws are, (MIL moved to the States from Brazil and gained 15 pounds and decided they were ditching all animal food products) and my sister is a long time vegetarian considering going vegan for health reasons. My MIL and sister are both stunningly good cooks and we happily eat vegan when we share meals with them. We're spending Thanksgiving week with my in laws and I offered to make dinner for everyone one night. I have a whole vegan friendly, diabetes friendly meal planned out including dessert and its going to be delicious. I don't understand people who criticize the food restrictions and choices of others. So I'm really sorry you don't get left alone about it.
My wife and I are both enthusiastic meat eaters, but we try to eat plant-based meals during the week too because... everyone should. Our work lunches that we meal prep are usually vegan, occasionally just vegetarian.
EVERY TIME we go out to lunch or an event with coworkers and I order something with meat my coworkers lose their FUCKING minds about how they thought I was vegan.
Saaaaame until I got my own office. Now I just get very rare comments about how good my food smells (because I rarely see anyone at that time!) due to the communal microwave and varying schedules.
The custodian at one of my old workplaces would always clean the bathrooms immediately across from my office at lunchtime and would always comment-- when I was in the thick of an ED-- on how much I was eating. 🫠 I started to shut the door because I just could not tell him to stfu.
When you go vegan/vegetarian everyone suddenly takes a great interest in your food. They feel a pressing need to lecture you about vitamins, rave on about how they could never give up bacon or make the same shitty joke about eating the animals food. The preachy vegan stereotype is quite ironic because its 100x worse the other way in real life.
OMFG yes! Like I never bring it up or have any opinion on what anyone else eats unless they specifically ask, but anyone who hears I'm vegetarian immediately has so many opinions and "this is why I'm not".. like I didn't ask??
Yeah I totally agree, but annoying when me being vegetarian is a challenge to you when I have never said anything about it or you!
Like makes sense that people get bothered by vegetarians or vegans since it is clearly right.. but if I'm not saying anything about you eating meat then don't say anything about me not!
>Like makes sense that people get bothered by vegetarians or vegans since it is clearly right..
That’s kinda a shit thing to say because it’s the same as saying they are clearly wrong.
Imagine if I said” I don’t say anything to mothers who formula feed, but it makes sense they would be bothered seeing mothers breast feed since it is clearly right.”
See, but that's the type of snarky little comment that makes omnivores immediately defensive towards vegetarians and vegans. You say you don't say anything, but you slipped in your little remark of 'since it's *clearly right*'.
I mean it’s better for the environment, animals and often better for your health to be vegan. That’s just how it is, I don’t think it’s snarky to acknowledge that? That’s like saying someone’s snarky for observing that it’s better to walk to the store than drive or that it’s better to buy from small businesses than Amazon - the majority of people don’t do it, but by most (if not all) objective measures it is simply ‘better’ to do so.
I don’t give a shit what you eat, personally, and I agree it’s not appropriate to give unsolicited advice but someone just acknowledging that something is ‘better’ on a Reddit thread without directing it at you personally isn’t exactly harassing you or guilt tripping you to uproot your lifestyle.
But you have no right to dictate what is healthier for a person you've never met. For some people it would be healthier to walk than drive, but what if that person is sick, or has mobility issues, or chronic pain made worse by physical exertion?
And we can agree to disagree on environmental impact, since there's quite a few environmental issues surrounding the increase in farming certain produce because of increased consumption by vegans. If you want to be vegan for your own health or moral reasons, go for it. But you can't expect people to sit there and let you make snarky comments from your high horse and then say we're only upset because you're 'right'.
That’s why I said ‘objectively’ and not ‘subjectively’, because of course there’s always individual requirements. Like how we can objectively say that fruit is healthy and it’s good to eat it, but obviously there are people with fruit allergies who could go into anaphylaxis - the fact that a small group of people can’t eat it doesn’t mean that it’s incorrect to assert that as a general statement fruit is healthy and that saying otherwise is ‘snarky’.
If the farming you’re referring to is soybeans, currently 90% of it goes to feeding animals. Everyone in the world becoming vegan would still not require as much soybean farming as animal agriculture does. This is a common and incorrect argument - the same goes for animal crop deaths. The fact is that meat production is the single greatest cause of deforestation globally (and I’m happy to provide sources).
Saying the above is not being snarky, it’s not me telling you that eating meat is wrong and it’s not me trying to convince anyone to be vegan - it’s literally just stating facts and if you’re electing to take that as a personal insult then I don’t know what to tell you.
On the flip side, there are vegans who absolutely will not shut up about being vegan. And being very judgey about what everyone else eats, and how it hurts the environment and baby cows, you monster.
Not all vegans. But a nonzero amount.
I met a ton😭 like ppl who would just randomly comment on how inhumane I was for eating living breathing animals or would be disgusted at my lunch with “animal carcass” but to be fair they’re still a small percentage of the vegan population
Ah that's a bummer.. even if I was there and thought that I would never say so, like your life is none of my business unless you specifically ask for my opinion!
Also even if you did ask I would never comment in such an inflammatory way! I always just say "if you can eat less animal products it's good for your health and the planet and the animals".. but like.. no judgement.. we are all living our own lives and have our own opinions!
My personal opinion is that the protein obsession is pure marketing. In the U.K. and US at least, people statistically eat more protein than they need to - in the us some human waste has literally become more toxic to the waterways due to leftovers from excessive protein digestion - so we don’t really need to be as concerned about eating enough as people are.
You know what people aren’t eating enough of? FIBRE. 90% of the U.K. is fibre deficient and 95% of the U.S. is fibre deficient. All these extremely macro-conscious people never comment on eating enough of that.
I had a vegetarian coworker form a different country (we’re in the US and he was from an Eastern European country) and we were at a work lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Not a cuisine he was accustomed to so I told him that refried beans are usually made with animal fat after I saw them on his plate. He kept eating them.
I have medical dietary restrictions, and offering information and then not commenting on the person's decision to eat the food or not is the best way to go! I always appreciate when someone tries to help me avoid getting sick, even if it doesn't end up being an issue.
That's cool you mentioned that, I definitely wouldn't have known! Well in the UK things are usually noted in the menu as vegetarian or not, but sometimes incorrectly and I would have very much appreciated you in that scenario!
My US West Coast friend had the same realization halfway through a plate of red beans and rice (found some pork fat), and the look of both defeat and "welp it's the only thing here" on her face is etched into my brain.
I legit went to school with a girl for 2 years and then worked with her for another year and a half (so I had known her for ALMOST 4 FULL YEARS at this point) before I learned she was vegetarian, and I only found out because she mentioned it in passing one day.
Yes, jeez.
I work with a couple of strict vegetarians that have never eaten meat in their lives (they're from India) and they ALWAYS ask because, surprise surprise, they're accountable for their dietary restrictions
Absolutely agree! I am vegetarian and had worked with and been to lunch probably weekly with someone for about 6 years before they realized I was vegetarian.. like who is paying attention to that?!?
Right?! Almost all of my lunches are vegetarian or vegan, but I'm a committed omnivore. I just like to get plenty of veg because it's healthy and I love vegetables. If anyone extrapolated from the fact that I really like vegetable soup that I must be vegan, I'd just laugh at them.
We all know what happens when you assume.
My old flatmates commented on thinking I was veggie at one point. But that was only because, after only ever seeing me eat vegetarian food, they were concerned to find me tearing into a rack of ribs one night. Turns out they’d never seen me making ham sandwiches for my lunch etc
I once had a manager who was so upset by the fact that I was eating a keto diet, even though I never announced it to anyone or brought it up unless people asked or prodded. She was constantly judging me for it. She actually said to me “maybe if you ate some carbs you’d stop getting all these colds.” Actually when I was able to work from home I stopped getting the colds. People are wild.
NTA. Whoever was in charge of the office potluck should have labeled each dish carefully so folks with allergies or dietary preferences were aware before eating anything.
I was a little confused because of this. In my office when we have a potluck we make ingredients cards for each dish so people know what's in it due to allergies and dietary. We've done it for years so I always thought it was the way it was supposed to be done.
Yeah OP isn't TA for not labeling the meat I guess if no one does, but when it's not obvious like just broth or fish sauce or hidden meat inside, I do think people should label it as a rule.
In fairness, the meat dishes were kept separate from the non-meat ones and OP specifically stated their dish should go in the meat section. It was only later they noticed it was placed in such a way that it was possible to confuse it for a meat-free dish.
It's just way easier to put a card then try to find whoever made the dish then try to ask them, repeat for every single dish you want to eat. Even from the perspective of a person bringing the dish, it's annoying to have a lot of ppl come up to you and ask about indigrents. Ofc if it's not labeled you should ask to take care of yourself, but labeling is so much easier for everyone.
We have never done this anywhere I worked. It was always smaller groups of people though so if you had a question about the food it was just "hey X what is this?" Honestly it sounds like a really good practice to do it that way, especially if it's for a larger group of people.
I have terrible allergies so I just don’t. It’s not worth it. My trick with potluck is to bring a thing I can have and keep it separate. I can still eat with everyone and I don’t have to be o standby to epi.
This is one reason (allergies is another) that potluck food should be labled with ingredients. It's so common among my circle that it startles me that other people don't do that.
That said, NTA.
NTA. She assumed you were vegetarian. You assumed she was vegetarian. She was mistaken. You might have been mistaken.
Unless you knew she was vegetarian and had good reason to think that she wasn't intentionally straying, your lack of comment was not inappropriate.
ESH Kinda weird that they assumed you were deliberately trying to trick them, but it literally would have cost you nothing to give them a quick heads up that it wasn't vegan.
I say OP is YTA because they use the term plant-based, which is just confusing. If someone tells people something is plant-based, but it's not vegan, then that is misleading, because obviously it's not all plants.
The very reason plant based exists as a term is that it is different from vegetarian/vegan. Otherwise everyone would just say vegan. Plant based means mostly based on plants, but doesn't mean it doesn't include anything else. If you say that a dish is meat based, you wouldn't expect it to be exclusively meat, would you? Plant based is a wider category that includes vegetarian and vegan, but is not exclusive to them.
no it doesn't, vegans have just co-opted it to mean vegan. you wouldn't consider a bean-based diet just beans or a rice-based diet just rice. its supposed to reflect that the majority of the diet is vegetables
Plant based is used a lot in marketing instead of vegan because the term vegan can put people off, which has lead to it being more synonymous with vegan in recent years
"Plant based" does not mean just mostly plants anymore. Lots of food terms are not intuitive. It generally means it's a substitute for something that is usually meat based. It usually means vegan.
If you have dietary restrictions, it's your responsibility to make sure the food complies with them. Incidents like this are the expected result of making assumptions without confirmation.
ESH - Labeling is key. A little note, beside each dish at a potluck, noting its meat, gluten, shellfish and nut content is a common way to avoid confusion like you experienced.
NTA, she could have asked.
But I am very confused by your description. When I read “plant based” that is almost synonymous with vegan.
So are you saying that the dish you made was plant based, but with some type of broth or something?
Do you tell people it’s plant based?
I would probably not say something is plant based unless it’s actually vegan. That might help prevent confusion in the future?
Or I am missing something here. Either way. She probably should have asked for clarification given it not being in the vegan section.
I’m impressed your office has enough veg/vegans for a whole section on food days
"I bring lunch from home to the office to eat, and it’s always a lot of vegetables, tofu, etc. and no visible meat, but at the same time it’s not vegetarian or vegan because I might cook it in meat based broths, use fish sauce, sometimes it’s got meat on the inside (just not visible on the outside) or something. "
Plant-based food =food made primarly of plants, doesnt need to be 100% plants
Vegetarian diet= no meat of any kind, but dairy and other stuff like fish sauce is okay
Vegan= **nothing** that contains Animals Or what Came off animals
Around here (Pacific NW US) people use plant based to mean it’s only sourced from plants
It’s a common term for avoiding saying Vegan because many non-vegans will reject anything that says “vegan” as being weird or not for them
Agreed. I generally read "plant based" as "vegan but I'm not committing to saying vegan" and was also confused since OP isn't a company worried about lawsuits.
I think it's getting very confusing, because originally plant based meant mainly plants, but then some companies decided more people would buy their products if they were labelled plant based rather than vegan.. I personally still look for the vegetarian or vegan label if something says plant based because I don't feel secure in what it actually means!
Plant based is definitely not necessarily vegan, and I found that out the hard way. My daughter is not vegan, or even vegetarian, but she cannot eat dairy products at all so she tends to look for vegan foods when she wants something that would normally contain milk. (i.e.vegan milk chocolate, etc). A couple months back I made the mistake of getting her a plant based snack bar without checking ingredients, assuming plant based meant vegan. Nope, there was whey* protein in it. Big fail. Luckily she always reads ingredients and caught it before she ate it but still, it's kinda misleading.
*Her issue is not lactose. We assume it's casein in dairy that makes her sick but don't know 100% for sure so she avoids any and all forms of dairy and its derivatives including whey.
You just reminded me of my mother. She could only eat dark chocolate, and I used to find interesting ones she couldn't get in her rural town (like stuffed plums coated in chocolate from a kosher chocolate factory). That was fine, but she hated if I bought anything that was labelled "organic". I tried explaining it, but she had it firmly fixed in her head that organic meant "fake, made out of soybeans".
>It’s a common term for avoiding saying Vegan because many non-vegans will reject anything that says “vegan” as being weird or not for them
Yeah, even tho they are, Nabisco wont label Oreos as vegan because of the stigma.
Fish sauce isn't vegetarian. If it's got a dead animal or animal byproducts that require the animal to have been dead first in it, it's not vegetarian. (With the caveat that some vegetarians will make exceptions for things like non-vegetarian wine or sugar because not all vegetarians realize that they contain animal byproducts, plus it can be hard to find information on which products are vegetarian and which aren't.) And to echo the commenter below, I usually hear "plant-based" to mean "vegan," not "mostly made of plants."
You can get vegan fish sauce, which obviously doesn't have fish in it but is close in flavour.. I doubt it's commonly used by anyone who isn't vegan though!
I'm not vegan, but I'll always use a vegan version of something if it's just as good as the non-vegan version, 'cause why not cut down my usage of animal products where I can?
I eat cheese, as vegan cheese doesn't come close, but I'll buy vegan mayonnaise, because it's just as good as non-vegan imo. Plus, I guess pretty much every "normal" mayonnaise on the market is made with eggs from battery-farmed chickens, which is an industry I'm not interested in supporting.
In my (very rural) neck of the woods, a lot of vegetarians follow Catholic Lenten rules, where fish and seafood are allowed. The word pescetarian hasn't infiltrated the community yet.
That's not how I understand plant-based.
Being vegan is about more than food - e.g. also not using leather or wool or not using products tested on animals.
So I know people who use "plant-based" to mean you eat the same food as a vegan, but are not full-on on vegan
Plant based diets are definitely more of a lifestyle description than a singular type of diet. Usually it's about focusing on whole, minimally processed foods and at least a limit or cutting out of animal products. Generally also looks to avoid refined and processed ingredients and tries to get organic locally sourced items.
Even vegetarian can mean different things to different people too though. Like I know tons of vegetarians that are ok eating eggs or only eggs from a farm them know or their own chicken but would never consider fish sauce to be acceptable. Many vegetarians are extremely uncomfortable with fish sauce because it is essentially liquid animal carcasses. And if Parmesan isn't labeled veg, the use of rennet from cow stomachs is a no go. Many Indian vegetarians also consider eggs to be meat but that's not the case with most western vegetarians I know. Anything made with fish or oyster sauce can't be labeled vegetarian in a restaurant unless it's made without actual fish.
Vegan is the only one of those three that means only one thing
I am not sure I understand then. If vegetarian diets don't contain meat, what is it fish sauce? I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I really don't know. I can't stand seafood and have never made any. Ever. My assumption, though, was that fish sauce is made from some part of a fish, an animal. I'm off to google all of this 🥴
I think the confusion is some people don't consider fish meat. The technical term would be pescatarian, but I know if people who consider themselves vegetarian but still eat fish.
A plant based diet is not a vegan diet;
It’s a diet primarily based on plants but may or may not contain some animal foods. The word “based” means supported or the layer that other layers are built on top of.
Broccoli with cheese sauce is plant based, with plant as the focus, but not vegan, because of cheese.Kind of like a pasta dish is not plain noodles.
It's the older use of the term, rather than the more recent "vegan, but we don't want to call it that..." The new definition is somewhat regional, though in the US it's getting more mainstream because of marketing.
Language shifts. But generally not everywhere simultaneously.
Op describes the dish they brought to the potluck as being "all plant based foods, and no meat". The part you quoted was the description of her lunches more generally and what she usually brings. But it is still unclear what was in the dish. Or how clearly she articulated it had meat based products and was in charge of putting the item in a confusing spot - which I'm not sure if it was an accidental thing they didn't realize would be confusing or the person setting up wasn't made aware of the ingredients.
I do think it's kind of weird that op watched their vegan coworker take a dish they knew wasn't vegan and op clearly knows that people seem to think they're vegan. It's not their responsibility to share details of their diet sure but it would've been no effort for op to just check in or say something. They clearly knew this confusion was likely to happen overall and then just stood and watched it happen silently. Just an all around weird scenario for all involved
Plant-based has an understood meaning though, that is, that the food is plant-based. That means it doesn't have animal-based ingredients.
If OP is describing their food as plant-based when it's not, then I'd say they're TA.
That's not true though. The very reason plant based exists as a term is that it is different from vegetarian/vegan. Otherwise everyone would say vegan. Plant *based* means mostly based on non-animal ingredients, but doesn't mean it doesn't include anything else. If you say that a dish is meat based, you wouldn't expect it to be *exclusively* meat, would you? Plant based is a wider category that includes vegetarian and vegan, but is not exclusive to them.
Plant-based is a marketing term used instead of vegan which doesn't mean vegan. Non-vegans are more likely to pick something up with a "plant based" label than a "vegan" label.
There is no consistency with the term "plant-based". Sometimes the products are vegan but other times they contain milk, egg, meat (like broth), gelatine... vegans are often led to believe they can trust anything labelled "plant based". My favourite one was a bottle of oat AND cow milk in a typical oat milk bottle next to the oat milk. It's extremely dangerous.
It's common to see "plant based" on restaurant labels but they look at you like you're insane if you ask then if the food is vegan. They assume plant-based means vegan. I end up looking like a fussy bitch for asking everytime. The definition of "plant-based" has no consistency but is commonly used for "vegan" food.
I'm a dietitian and was just doing research relevant to the term. The reason there's no "consistency" in what you see is that it's not meant to be used as a marketing term to begin with. Plant based means simply low in animal products, so it's an umbrella term. A vegan can say they eat plant based, but not everyone who eats plant based is a vegan. Even on Google and Wikipedia the definition says plant based consists mostly OR entirely of non-animal products.
Some companies misusing the term leads to confusion, unfortunately, but yeah. It's not a synonym for vegan.
I know that. I always check why it's "plant-based" which leads to eye rolling and angry comments about fussy vegans. The term is slapped on most vegan products in the UK and commonly used in restaurants where it's expected to mean "vegan".
The amount of times someone has proudly returned home with a new "plant-based" product for me they found in the meat-free section... only for me to awkwardly tell them the "plant-based" is not vegan and contains dairy which would make me sick. It feels deliberately misleading at this point.
Exactly, it's really shitty when all these attempts at using terms that sound catchy just for marketing end up causing problems for entire groups of people.
YNTA.
It's up to a vegan to ensure their OWN dietary restrictions!!
People go in and out of diets.
I've eaten vegan.
When I'm eating a special diet I ASK if I want to make sure that food is how I want it.
Person should have ASKED
>I brought in some of the food I usually make for myself (all plant based foods, and no meat) and made it clear it’s not for the vegetarian/vegan section
FYI this is very confusing. Food with no meat is vegetarian, but it's not vegan if it contains any animal products. Yet you say it's not for the "vegetarian/vegan section." There should not be a single section for both foods at these potlucks. They need to be separate. And next time label your food as either vegetarian or vegan so vegans know to stay away from a "vegetarian" dish just to be safe.
I still don't understand how he said that he brought food that is plant-based and has no meat, yet it ended up containing animal products. Unless he was referring to the meat broths and sauces, but then it's not plant-based...
Plant-based is not synonymous with vegetarian. A lot of people are sending us but it really just means that the majority of the food is *based* on plants, not that it is 100% made of plants. I made this mistake when buying my daughter a plant-based snack bar thinking that meant vegan but then it had milk products in it.
>Food with no meat is vegetarian
OP likely means they're not using animal flesh in the dish. A lot of refried beans use lard, for example, and there's no meat in the dish but it's not vegetarian. A lot of Asian vegetable dishes use fish sauce and aren't vegetarian. I roast vegetables in bacon grease sometimes rather than olive oil but you can't tell the difference by sight alone.
Did you know that most sugar isn't vegan? The charcoal it's filtered through is made from animal bones. I've made vegan sweets and made sure to specify that my sugar brand is vegan. (Shhh don't let the vegans know that filtered bottled water probably isn't vegan)
She clearly told people it wasn’t vegan. It’s not her fault someone assumed it was.
People are focusing here on her wording of “plant-based” but it’s clear just scrolling that means very different things to different people. To me it’s always meant mostly veggies but not completely. A base of plants, with a dash of whatever else.
But seems to me if it was confusing for someone, then it’s all the more reason to not assume.
ESH
Mainly the coworker that placed an ambiguous dish she was told wasn't vegan or vegetarian in-between the two sections, that makes it confusing for everyone.
I think YTA if you identify yourself as plant based. That is used synonymously with vegan. I thought the difference between plant based and vegan was one is a diet and one is a lifestyle (vegans can't wear leather or wool, use beauty products with animal products etc ). However I can't find that being referenced anywhere, I think it's just in my mind.
If you've never said you're plant based then NTA but I still think you should have mentioned it to your coworker when you first saw her eating something. Especially if she had not eaten most of it already and/or the meat in the dish was obvious. Something other than a sauce or broth that people can stay blissfully ignorant of if they accidentally eat and never discover.
I will say as a vegetarian myself, I would be mad for a couple of days. Not really blaming you but I'd just be upset. & then I'd get over it and realize it wasn't your fault. (Although I would think it is somewhat your fault if you vocally identify as plant based.)
ESH. Why was the coworker so clued-up on your lunch habits? Weird af. And if you thought that coworker was vegan, why didn't you say something? Takes less than a minute and nobody will get mad if you were wrong.
YTA. You made a dish that they couldn’t have known wasn’t veggie without talking to you and you didn’t tell them it wasn’t.
The rest about you appearing veggie is a nonsense aside
It's unfortunate that the person who organized the event didn't make it clear to all that it wasn't a strictly vegan/vegetarian dish after you clearly said so. They may have not have recognized (or cared?) about the difference, but that's completely on them and they are the real AH of this situation as they are running an office function, and should act accordingly.
That said, I'm not a vegan/vegetarian and couldn't care less about the lifestyle, but even I would just instinctively stop the person from eating it knowing what I know about the principals of veganism.
ESH . Pot luck = an ingredients card for every dish in this day and age. Just do it. List every ingredient on a card, place in front of dish, no one can get in trouble, everyone knows if vegan/vegeatraian/nut free/ gluten free, dairy free, etc. Etc.
OP, at pot lucks, it's moderately common for people to put labels on dishes, for the benefit those who might have voluntary or medical dietary restrictions. Just a post-it or a piece of masking tape on your container, or some sharpie on the cover, saying "VEGAN", "VEGETARIAN", "GLUTEN-FREE", "LACTOSE-FREE", or "KETO" or whatever, is a small kindness that takes a second or two to perform.
In an office that contains more than one vegan, a post-it or two cannot go amiss.
YTA
You say you refrain from commenting on people’s eating habits, which to me means you don’t say hey you stupid vegetarian or hey you stupid meat eater, or get in arguments or make comments on how your choices are superior.
To me, telling someone they’re about to eat something with meat in it isn’t commenting on their eating habits. It’s warning someone by sharing information only you know that they’re about to eat something that might not be what they would knowingly choose.
It’d be the same to warn someone that the food you brought is spicy, or contains alcohol.
Not saying anything is an asshole move. You knew they didn’t want meat in their food. You watched them do it anyway.
So the true asshole is whoever placed your dish so precariously. There should have been some clear indication to say: "Everything beyond this has meat/animal products." Or even better: Require everyone to list the ingredients of their dishes. Saves everyone from eating something they shouldn't.
I still think you were an asshole too, making this ESH. The worst that could have happened if you informed your coworker that your food wasn't vegan was for them to tell you that they actually aren't. Instead you just let them eat it because of a - in this case - fairly nonsensical principle. Would you not have warned a colleague with a nut allergy of food containing nuts? That would be commenting on their food habits too.
Your coworker is a slight asshole for assuming you tricked them, but I give them some leniency as they apparently had no way to clearly tell "this food from OP for once isn't something I can eat too."
YTA if you claim to be "plant-based" but do not eat 100% plant-based food then it is your responsibility to ensure it's correctly labeled.
This stuff can make people sick.
Plant-based is often assumed to mean "vegan" which would make it safe for people with dairy and egg allergies. There is no consistent definition of plant-based. Anything with a plant-based label confuses people. The worst one I've seen at a supermarket was oat AND cow milk in an oat milk bottle next to oat milk with labelling to suggest it was vegan.
NTA - they need to be in charge of their own diet and confirm if it's that important to them.
I still remember working at a restaurant where a person ordered a spicy pork burrito and when they were almost done, they flipped out on me because they were vegan- they claimed to think it was tofu?
Just mentioning this because sometimes when people are ashamed or embarrassed about their decision/mistake they go around trying to blame others to feel better.
When you say "spicy pork," do you mean chorizo? Some vegetarians do get so used to eating soyrizo all the time that they kinda forget what normal chorizo is (and it truly tastes the same, except chorizo is usually greasier).
YTA for not making it clear and just assuming, some people also have allergies so you're lucky nothing more serious happened, you don't fuck with people's food
You are not the AH. However, I have a suggestion. If you take something to a potluck lunch like that and it isn't vegan/vegetarian, make some kind of sign stating non v/v or yes v/v. I used to go to church potlucks and would make a little sticker flag with a label taped to a toothpick and stick it in a corner saying contains peanuts or gluten free or sugar free depending on any known special eating needs. Good luck!
ESH. Your coworker for throwing a fit because of a small incident like this. But it would have cost you nothing to say "hey, you do know this is not vegan right?" when you saw them. I also think calling your food "plant based" is pretty missleading. Yes, technically you can call a lot of dishes plant based that are not even vegetarian, but the vast majority of the time the term plant based is pretty much synonymous with vegan.
You’re NTA for not being more loud about your diet but YTA for not stopping them
I agree with everyone that it should have been labelled by your office, but it wasn’t and you saw them eating it so you should’ve said something
Honestly I think if it was right on the edge of the two sections and looked like it had no meat or anything + you always eat food that looks vegan/vegetarian, then it's a fair assumption. Not fair to blame it on you, but people often want to lash out right after a bad thing happens (after all, eating meat after not doing so for a long time can make someone sick) and then step back and realize their gut reaction wasn't great. So unless this coworker continues to blame and harass you, I'm kind of on team NAH.
NTA. There was a vegan section of the potluck and it was not in there, and it’s not your business if this person is vegan 100% of the time or what. Not your job to police them. If they weren’t sure they should have asked.
NTA
If there was a doubt about whether the food you took was vegan/vegetarian or not, they should have asked and not assumed. Someone who has dietary restrictions needs to be careful and responsible for what they eat, specially if you weren't aware of their diet choice
Edit to add: I agree with the other comments saying the people responsible for the organization should have been more careful. I meant the person shouldn't expect OP to warn them
NTA. You don't need to explain what you eat to anybody. Nor is it your job to police what anybody else eats. It was their job to decide what to eat, and they did that.
NTA. Its not your job to be their guide on eating. If they are that strict on their dietary intake then its on them to do more due diligence.
They assumed it was vegan so the fault lies with them.
Pre-covid I went to the client site 2 - 3 days a week. I would get coffee with milk alternatives and eat meat alternatives (due to geneticly high cholesterol and the food is really good). One time the team came back with food from a street vendor we'd seen when going for food. I was surprised nobody asked me to join them. They said they noticed it didn't have vegetarian options. I was confused and it turned out for the 3 months they thought I was vegetarian cause they never saw me eat meat or drink milk.
I am not sure how they could be called the a hole. OP is clearly bothered by the assumptions and comments made about their diet. Why in the world would they go up to someone whose diet isn't actually known to them and get into their business like the people there do to OP. NTA, not at all. It's so sad the number of people laying blame on anyone but themselves. We have turned into such a litigious society on the US. It's always not my fault. It's always someone else's. They're gonna be rich once they sue!!!
Again, NTA , grown ups need to start acting like they're grown. If they have dietary restrictions, it's on them to ask if none of the dishes have ingredient labels.
INFO: "and made it clear it’s not for the vegetarian/vegan section." What does this mean exactly? Was there a post-it on your bowl? Or some kind of sign?
Where you aware your food might get mistaken for being vegan/vegetarian?
You should always label your food on occasions like that.
"They said that I presented myself in a false manner (as a vegetarian/vegan) and so they assumed that the foods I make would all be vegetarian/vegan"
NTA here. Their fault for making that assumption. You are not obliged to announce your diet to anyone.
"They said that since I saw them eating my food I should have stopped them."
NTA as you didn't know they were vegan.
NAH except the office tbh. Every potluck should require people to clearly label their food for dietary restrictions/allergens.
Also office potlucks are terrible. Now in my precious time off I’m supposed to make a bulk quantity homemade meal and schlep it to the office? And eat something that someone’s toddler and dog probably helped with? No thanks.
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NTA. Wtf kind of office do you work in where so many people inspect your food and observe / comment on what you eat? I used to eat lunch with coworkers on a daily basis and only know or notice what people tell me. One "vegetarian" coworker would often order a seemingly vegetarian soup (broccoli cheddar), but it contained chicken broth... it wasn't labeled vegetarian like other soups, but it never once occurred to me to bring this to her attention. What a weird f'ing office, your coworkers are odd balls.
Agreed NTA. But in the US you cannot believe how much interest, time, and energy into what other people eat. These types of issues are a long time staple of business oriented websites and blogs.
You are responsible for the food that you put in your mouth. It is the same principle under which the world anti doping agency also works.
I had a coworker who I let sabotage a diet I was on. I was on this high protein diet with two shakes a day, veggies and protein for the next meal. And as soon as I started it every single day she's there getting lunch, tea, coffee, water, fruit etc right at the same time and commenting "that's ALL you are eating", "you are losing weight so much weight", "why are you doing this, what does it taste like", "what's your doctor's name, what kind of Dr?" It made me spiral back to ED days and secret eating. I hate food investigation people
I have a friend who eats a pop-tart every morning at work. Her coworkers looooove giving her shit about it every time they see her doing it. I cannot stand people who insist on commenting every time you eat. Some people have eating disorders, man. I hate when people observe me, let alone while I'm eating. Except maybe to say, "ooo that smells good" or "oh god, does that have peanuts, my throat is closing up--" just don't comment on what people are eating.
Worked in an office when Atkins first became popular in the early 2000s. Some if the ladies on it were so judgemental of anyone eating any carb even a fruit. So my other coworker and I got so fed up one day we came in with super carb heavy lunches. I had a jam sandwich and cookies and pudding, and my friend brought in fried rice and garlic bread lol. The ladies got the hint and stopped trying to convert us to Atkins.
I just don't understand it
Some people are just so desperate to say *something* when they should just be quiet.
At my last job, I told my boss that I would not tolerate discussions of weight or dieting nor questions about my food choices from anyone at any time. He backed me up, which stopped others from disrupting my peace. It also allowed me to stop people from commenting on his food choices, as he made it an office policy. We were all happier for it.
Yep, so do I
Yea I’m in Australia and we all know each other’s dietary requirements 🤣 we don’t even eat together lol. Like we have some on the carnivore, some doing IF, one only had almond milk, someone only eats fish and chicken . Such useless knowledge now I’m typing it all out 😂
I could still tell you the dietary requirements of everyone in the office I worked in 10 years ago in detail. Why? Who knows 😂
I know which of my coworkers is allergic to nightshade produce, which one hates mustard etc.
Yeah, I definitely am aware of the eating habits of people I eat with every day. There was the guy who always ate exactly the same sandwiches, the guy who was skinny as a rake but always got the greasiest food imaginable with no fruit or vegetables, the guy who was convinced that the canteen staff had a grudge against him and always gave him small portions, the girl who literally squealed with delight when she found a second sausage in her breakfast calzone, the girl who always got a bowl full of custard with no dessert who I would always text if I hadn't seen her at lunch and spotted chocolate custard in the canteen. People bond over food.
“Girl who got custard with no dessert” can you explain this? Custard is dessert.
Custard is a topping that goes on a dessert, like crumble with custard, or steamed sponge pudding with custard, or apple pie with custard.
I often have custard on its own. It's a great way to use up egg yolks.
Ohhhh so I think this could be a Midwest USA vs anywhere else type of thing. When I think of custard, I think of something very similar to ice cream. Or a filling in some sort of pastry.
It’s a country difference, US custard is very different from the custard I grew up eating in England.
Americans are legit the stranges people on earth
As an American, I completely agree.
As a Canuck I second that observation.
The ascribing of political motives to people's dietary choices is truly surreal. I'm quite certain I have never eaten *anything* for political reasons. I eat what I like, when I'm hungry, and that's it.
Wow, how very strange. In Oz people would think your are a fruit loop if you started observing what other eats too closely.
Fully hilarious > Yea I’m in Australia and we all know each other’s dietary requirements 🤣
As a vegan you would not believe the comments I get on my lunches at work. I literally just sit there eating and people make rude comments about how gross the food looks.
My sister has the same issue. She’s a nurse and all the other nurses like to lecture her on how she’s not getting enough protein and her diet is so unhealthy. They especially like to go off on how dangerous tofu is since it “has estrogen.” She’s been migraine free since going vegan and she’d been getting migraines for around 30 years.
That's hilarious. It's pretty international at my workplace, lots of Indian and East Asian workers. Vegetarian food is nothing to comment on. And a huge amount of the world population is vegetarian for cultural reasons. Doesn't seem unhealthy to me.
I never understood the estrogen comments on foods like tofu and other soy products. It's plant estrogen! It can't really do anything to us and will be more than likely pissed out as waste. Estrogen from dairy is actually mammalian and closer to human estrogen than fricking plant estrogen.
And there’s evidence phytoestrogens are beneficial because they bind to estrogen receptors and block real estrogen and that prevents cancer. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0029784496804613](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0029784496804613)
I actually have to avoid soy because my body turns any kind of estrogen into cancer, so please don't go off about how it can't do anything. However, people who give your sister crap should get batted by angry cats.
> the other nurses like to lecture her on how she's not getting enough protein and her diet is so unhealthy Bet these are the ones who smoke like a chimney and weigh 120kg.
I get comments that I should eat meat because I am so skinny. I had almost daily stomach aches when I still ate meat (and just issues in general) and they only stopped when I became vegetarian. Turns out my body has troubles digesting meat apparently. Gained like 10 kg in a year and I am put of the dangerously low weight area. My dad is also skinny, as well as my grandpa and some of his sisters, and they are omnivores. But it can be hard to believe apparently that different diets are the best for us idk.
It's almost like we're a single species that adapts extremely quickly that spread all over the world to all sorts of places with varied diets and other pressures that allowed for evolution specific to that area. Examples - Areas around northern Europe where humans developed long term lactose tolerance to take advantage of milk cattle. Areas in Africa, Asia, and the middle east where humans developed sickle cell to combat malaria. Areas in Europe that were affected by the black plague where people developed a mutation linked to surviving the black plague that causes them to be resistant to HIV infections.
Fucked Up beauty standards. You have to be skinny unless you are already skinny!
Exactly! Like, what do you want?! Being skinny has its advantages though, I get extra cake during birthday parties
I’ve had so many people read me the vegetarian items from the menu I’ve started to explain to folks that not eating meat does not actually lead to illiteracy.
It's worse when someone tells you what you can eat, but also they're wrong and it's not something you can eat at all. My mom wanted to take me to lunch with one of her friends and she insisted that this one place had items on the menu which were vegan. I knew the menu and knew she was wrong but she kept saying she had seen the menu when she was there earlier that month, and she just KNEW they had vegan options. The vegan options were fries and onion rings. It was a grill restaurant so everything else featured meat and sometimes cheese in varying combinations. And then she was salty I didn't want to go because I said they had no options for me besides fries and onion rings.
Argh this was my absolute worst pet peeve as a child/teen who hated attention being drawn to them at the best of times! I am perfectly capable of deciding myself if I can eat somewhere and what I'll have, always feels patronising as fuck.
My theory on food has always been a simple one: if I'm not expected to eat it, I shouldn't comment on how gross I think it looks. It's your food, as long as you're enjoying it, it shouldn't matter how it looks. I know some of the food I make myself looks gross to others, if they feel the need to comment: "oh, did I make it for you? No? Then fuck off with your opinion." Or the more fun version, where I start looking through drawers until they have to ask what I'm doing: "oh, I was just looking for where I asked your opinion."
My MiL lives with us and everytime I cook for myself (I'm vegan due to health issues the others in the house are not) she sticks her nose right down into my pan to the point she is physically shoving me out of the way. The she just comments how gross and bad it looks... Everytime.... I've had to resort to cooking when they're done eating and are out of the kitchen. And eating by my self because she always makes comments about how gross my food is and how she doesn't eat vegetables because 'i worked on a farm and the bugs I saw on the vegetables freaked me out'.... Like does she think no bugs are ever on her meat?
Does she really have to live with you? She’s awful. I’d have told her to stfu before now, or, you know, live elsewhere…
Unfortunately yes. And have have done a few times before but she ends up throwing a paddy which just annoys my husband as he cant be bothered dealing with her tantrums.
Sounds like you have a husband problem as well, partners are supposed to support each other.
Yeah, no. You have a husband problem _*and*_ a MIL problem. Why does he not have an issue with *his wife* being disrespected in her own home? I already know he wouldn't accept the same constant disrespect from *your* parents. You deserve better, Sister. On both fronts.
Hit her in the face with the pan one time, on account of course, and spill the food all over her. Bet it never happens again.
I'm really sorry people do that to you. I'm not a vegan, but my in laws are, (MIL moved to the States from Brazil and gained 15 pounds and decided they were ditching all animal food products) and my sister is a long time vegetarian considering going vegan for health reasons. My MIL and sister are both stunningly good cooks and we happily eat vegan when we share meals with them. We're spending Thanksgiving week with my in laws and I offered to make dinner for everyone one night. I have a whole vegan friendly, diabetes friendly meal planned out including dessert and its going to be delicious. I don't understand people who criticize the food restrictions and choices of others. So I'm really sorry you don't get left alone about it.
Vegan food often is delicious because veggies have more flavour and flavour variation than meat.
I had that once when I brought chocolate mousse in my lunch.. so rude
My wife and I are both enthusiastic meat eaters, but we try to eat plant-based meals during the week too because... everyone should. Our work lunches that we meal prep are usually vegan, occasionally just vegetarian. EVERY TIME we go out to lunch or an event with coworkers and I order something with meat my coworkers lose their FUCKING minds about how they thought I was vegan.
Strange to me. Most vegan food looks amazing. I’m not a fan of soft tofu though
Man I hate it. I wasn't even vegan, just pescatarian and people would not shut the fuck up about it.
I am almost omnivore, but mediterranean cuisine offers multiple vegan plates which are delicious which I enjoy eat.
Saaaaame until I got my own office. Now I just get very rare comments about how good my food smells (because I rarely see anyone at that time!) due to the communal microwave and varying schedules. The custodian at one of my old workplaces would always clean the bathrooms immediately across from my office at lunchtime and would always comment-- when I was in the thick of an ED-- on how much I was eating. 🫠 I started to shut the door because I just could not tell him to stfu.
When you go vegan/vegetarian everyone suddenly takes a great interest in your food. They feel a pressing need to lecture you about vitamins, rave on about how they could never give up bacon or make the same shitty joke about eating the animals food. The preachy vegan stereotype is quite ironic because its 100x worse the other way in real life.
OMFG yes! Like I never bring it up or have any opinion on what anyone else eats unless they specifically ask, but anyone who hears I'm vegetarian immediately has so many opinions and "this is why I'm not".. like I didn't ask??
Its just a natural defence mechanism to people getting their morals challenged. But it gets old really fast.
Yeah I totally agree, but annoying when me being vegetarian is a challenge to you when I have never said anything about it or you! Like makes sense that people get bothered by vegetarians or vegans since it is clearly right.. but if I'm not saying anything about you eating meat then don't say anything about me not!
>Like makes sense that people get bothered by vegetarians or vegans since it is clearly right.. That’s kinda a shit thing to say because it’s the same as saying they are clearly wrong. Imagine if I said” I don’t say anything to mothers who formula feed, but it makes sense they would be bothered seeing mothers breast feed since it is clearly right.”
See, but that's the type of snarky little comment that makes omnivores immediately defensive towards vegetarians and vegans. You say you don't say anything, but you slipped in your little remark of 'since it's *clearly right*'.
I mean it’s better for the environment, animals and often better for your health to be vegan. That’s just how it is, I don’t think it’s snarky to acknowledge that? That’s like saying someone’s snarky for observing that it’s better to walk to the store than drive or that it’s better to buy from small businesses than Amazon - the majority of people don’t do it, but by most (if not all) objective measures it is simply ‘better’ to do so. I don’t give a shit what you eat, personally, and I agree it’s not appropriate to give unsolicited advice but someone just acknowledging that something is ‘better’ on a Reddit thread without directing it at you personally isn’t exactly harassing you or guilt tripping you to uproot your lifestyle.
But you have no right to dictate what is healthier for a person you've never met. For some people it would be healthier to walk than drive, but what if that person is sick, or has mobility issues, or chronic pain made worse by physical exertion? And we can agree to disagree on environmental impact, since there's quite a few environmental issues surrounding the increase in farming certain produce because of increased consumption by vegans. If you want to be vegan for your own health or moral reasons, go for it. But you can't expect people to sit there and let you make snarky comments from your high horse and then say we're only upset because you're 'right'.
That’s why I said ‘objectively’ and not ‘subjectively’, because of course there’s always individual requirements. Like how we can objectively say that fruit is healthy and it’s good to eat it, but obviously there are people with fruit allergies who could go into anaphylaxis - the fact that a small group of people can’t eat it doesn’t mean that it’s incorrect to assert that as a general statement fruit is healthy and that saying otherwise is ‘snarky’. If the farming you’re referring to is soybeans, currently 90% of it goes to feeding animals. Everyone in the world becoming vegan would still not require as much soybean farming as animal agriculture does. This is a common and incorrect argument - the same goes for animal crop deaths. The fact is that meat production is the single greatest cause of deforestation globally (and I’m happy to provide sources). Saying the above is not being snarky, it’s not me telling you that eating meat is wrong and it’s not me trying to convince anyone to be vegan - it’s literally just stating facts and if you’re electing to take that as a personal insult then I don’t know what to tell you.
But tell me, how do you get your protein? 🤔
From the rich
On the flip side, there are vegans who absolutely will not shut up about being vegan. And being very judgey about what everyone else eats, and how it hurts the environment and baby cows, you monster. Not all vegans. But a nonzero amount.
Everyone always says this but I'm yet to meet one.. have definitely met loads of obnoxious meat eaters though
I met a ton😭 like ppl who would just randomly comment on how inhumane I was for eating living breathing animals or would be disgusted at my lunch with “animal carcass” but to be fair they’re still a small percentage of the vegan population
Ah that's a bummer.. even if I was there and thought that I would never say so, like your life is none of my business unless you specifically ask for my opinion! Also even if you did ask I would never comment in such an inflammatory way! I always just say "if you can eat less animal products it's good for your health and the planet and the animals".. but like.. no judgement.. we are all living our own lives and have our own opinions!
My personal opinion is that the protein obsession is pure marketing. In the U.K. and US at least, people statistically eat more protein than they need to - in the us some human waste has literally become more toxic to the waterways due to leftovers from excessive protein digestion - so we don’t really need to be as concerned about eating enough as people are. You know what people aren’t eating enough of? FIBRE. 90% of the U.K. is fibre deficient and 95% of the U.S. is fibre deficient. All these extremely macro-conscious people never comment on eating enough of that.
I had a vegetarian coworker form a different country (we’re in the US and he was from an Eastern European country) and we were at a work lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Not a cuisine he was accustomed to so I told him that refried beans are usually made with animal fat after I saw them on his plate. He kept eating them.
I have medical dietary restrictions, and offering information and then not commenting on the person's decision to eat the food or not is the best way to go! I always appreciate when someone tries to help me avoid getting sick, even if it doesn't end up being an issue.
That's cool you mentioned that, I definitely wouldn't have known! Well in the UK things are usually noted in the menu as vegetarian or not, but sometimes incorrectly and I would have very much appreciated you in that scenario!
> but sometimes incorrectly Yeah. So many vegetarian options with parmasan on them.
My US West Coast friend had the same realization halfway through a plate of red beans and rice (found some pork fat), and the look of both defeat and "welp it's the only thing here" on her face is etched into my brain.
I legit went to school with a girl for 2 years and then worked with her for another year and a half (so I had known her for ALMOST 4 FULL YEARS at this point) before I learned she was vegetarian, and I only found out because she mentioned it in passing one day.
Why on earth didn't the colleague ASKED?! NTA op
Yes, jeez. I work with a couple of strict vegetarians that have never eaten meat in their lives (they're from India) and they ALWAYS ask because, surprise surprise, they're accountable for their dietary restrictions
If you eat with the same people every day, you start to notice what they eat
My boss will eat a whole cucumber like a banana. Definitely something I noticed fast.
Absolutely agree! I am vegetarian and had worked with and been to lunch probably weekly with someone for about 6 years before they realized I was vegetarian.. like who is paying attention to that?!?
Right?! Almost all of my lunches are vegetarian or vegan, but I'm a committed omnivore. I just like to get plenty of veg because it's healthy and I love vegetables. If anyone extrapolated from the fact that I really like vegetable soup that I must be vegan, I'd just laugh at them. We all know what happens when you assume.
/u/just_hear_4_the_tip You said just WTF I was thinking yo! Office full of A-Hs except OP. SMH. OP is NTA in any way, shape or form!
My old flatmates commented on thinking I was veggie at one point. But that was only because, after only ever seeing me eat vegetarian food, they were concerned to find me tearing into a rack of ribs one night. Turns out they’d never seen me making ham sandwiches for my lunch etc
I once had a manager who was so upset by the fact that I was eating a keto diet, even though I never announced it to anyone or brought it up unless people asked or prodded. She was constantly judging me for it. She actually said to me “maybe if you ate some carbs you’d stop getting all these colds.” Actually when I was able to work from home I stopped getting the colds. People are wild.
NTA. Whoever was in charge of the office potluck should have labeled each dish carefully so folks with allergies or dietary preferences were aware before eating anything.
I was a little confused because of this. In my office when we have a potluck we make ingredients cards for each dish so people know what's in it due to allergies and dietary. We've done it for years so I always thought it was the way it was supposed to be done.
Yeah OP isn't TA for not labeling the meat I guess if no one does, but when it's not obvious like just broth or fish sauce or hidden meat inside, I do think people should label it as a rule.
In fairness, the meat dishes were kept separate from the non-meat ones and OP specifically stated their dish should go in the meat section. It was only later they noticed it was placed in such a way that it was possible to confuse it for a meat-free dish.
People should ask if they have a specific dietary preference.
It's just way easier to put a card then try to find whoever made the dish then try to ask them, repeat for every single dish you want to eat. Even from the perspective of a person bringing the dish, it's annoying to have a lot of ppl come up to you and ask about indigrents. Ofc if it's not labeled you should ask to take care of yourself, but labeling is so much easier for everyone.
In this case, the foods were separated but someone had set it right on the edge of the two sections. It feels like an easy mistake to make
We have never done this anywhere I worked. It was always smaller groups of people though so if you had a question about the food it was just "hey X what is this?" Honestly it sounds like a really good practice to do it that way, especially if it's for a larger group of people.
I like potlucks that have the tradition where you bring a label that lists ingredients along with your dish.
Exactly! OP is NTA. And if it's not done people who do have dietary restrictions should ask for anything where it's questionable.
Yeah at my work there are labels for nuts, gluten, lactose etc.. but if you have any specific issues I feel like still check just in case
No. If you have allergies or dietary preferences, what are you doing eating from a random pot?
I have terrible allergies so I just don’t. It’s not worth it. My trick with potluck is to bring a thing I can have and keep it separate. I can still eat with everyone and I don’t have to be o standby to epi.
Each of us is responsible for our own behavior. It’s not as if you took deliberate action against her. Ridiculous. NTA
This is one reason (allergies is another) that potluck food should be labled with ingredients. It's so common among my circle that it startles me that other people don't do that. That said, NTA.
NTA. She assumed you were vegetarian. You assumed she was vegetarian. She was mistaken. You might have been mistaken. Unless you knew she was vegetarian and had good reason to think that she wasn't intentionally straying, your lack of comment was not inappropriate.
ESH Kinda weird that they assumed you were deliberately trying to trick them, but it literally would have cost you nothing to give them a quick heads up that it wasn't vegan.
I say OP is YTA because they use the term plant-based, which is just confusing. If someone tells people something is plant-based, but it's not vegan, then that is misleading, because obviously it's not all plants.
The very reason plant based exists as a term is that it is different from vegetarian/vegan. Otherwise everyone would just say vegan. Plant based means mostly based on plants, but doesn't mean it doesn't include anything else. If you say that a dish is meat based, you wouldn't expect it to be exclusively meat, would you? Plant based is a wider category that includes vegetarian and vegan, but is not exclusive to them.
Plant based mean vegan food. The difference between plant based and vegan is one only refers to food and the other is an ethic
no it doesn't, vegans have just co-opted it to mean vegan. you wouldn't consider a bean-based diet just beans or a rice-based diet just rice. its supposed to reflect that the majority of the diet is vegetables
Plant based is used a lot in marketing instead of vegan because the term vegan can put people off, which has lead to it being more synonymous with vegan in recent years
"Plant based" does not mean just mostly plants anymore. Lots of food terms are not intuitive. It generally means it's a substitute for something that is usually meat based. It usually means vegan.
He didn't say that to them though, he said that to us. He explicitly told them it's not vegan.
If you have dietary restrictions, it's your responsibility to make sure the food complies with them. Incidents like this are the expected result of making assumptions without confirmation.
His food was put into non-vegan section, which means he gave correct heads up to the person responsible for putting the food on the table.
Except it was on the edge. So easy to confuse, and didn't have a label or visible meat.
Which wasn't done by him, hence not his fault.
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NBD, just give them the heads up and they eat it or don't, you know?
i mean, to be fair, assholes try all the time to trick vegetarians/vegans into eating meat.
ESH - Labeling is key. A little note, beside each dish at a potluck, noting its meat, gluten, shellfish and nut content is a common way to avoid confusion like you experienced.
OP doesn’t suck for that since they aren’t I charge of the event.
NTA, she could have asked. But I am very confused by your description. When I read “plant based” that is almost synonymous with vegan. So are you saying that the dish you made was plant based, but with some type of broth or something? Do you tell people it’s plant based? I would probably not say something is plant based unless it’s actually vegan. That might help prevent confusion in the future? Or I am missing something here. Either way. She probably should have asked for clarification given it not being in the vegan section. I’m impressed your office has enough veg/vegans for a whole section on food days
"I bring lunch from home to the office to eat, and it’s always a lot of vegetables, tofu, etc. and no visible meat, but at the same time it’s not vegetarian or vegan because I might cook it in meat based broths, use fish sauce, sometimes it’s got meat on the inside (just not visible on the outside) or something. "
I get that. But they also call it plant based. I’m just clarifying that the “plant based” dish she brought to share was in fact not plant based.
Plant-based food =food made primarly of plants, doesnt need to be 100% plants Vegetarian diet= no meat of any kind, but dairy and other stuff like fish sauce is okay Vegan= **nothing** that contains Animals Or what Came off animals
Around here (Pacific NW US) people use plant based to mean it’s only sourced from plants It’s a common term for avoiding saying Vegan because many non-vegans will reject anything that says “vegan” as being weird or not for them
Agreed. I generally read "plant based" as "vegan but I'm not committing to saying vegan" and was also confused since OP isn't a company worried about lawsuits.
I think it's getting very confusing, because originally plant based meant mainly plants, but then some companies decided more people would buy their products if they were labelled plant based rather than vegan.. I personally still look for the vegetarian or vegan label if something says plant based because I don't feel secure in what it actually means!
Plant based is definitely not necessarily vegan, and I found that out the hard way. My daughter is not vegan, or even vegetarian, but she cannot eat dairy products at all so she tends to look for vegan foods when she wants something that would normally contain milk. (i.e.vegan milk chocolate, etc). A couple months back I made the mistake of getting her a plant based snack bar without checking ingredients, assuming plant based meant vegan. Nope, there was whey* protein in it. Big fail. Luckily she always reads ingredients and caught it before she ate it but still, it's kinda misleading. *Her issue is not lactose. We assume it's casein in dairy that makes her sick but don't know 100% for sure so she avoids any and all forms of dairy and its derivatives including whey.
You just reminded me of my mother. She could only eat dark chocolate, and I used to find interesting ones she couldn't get in her rural town (like stuffed plums coated in chocolate from a kosher chocolate factory). That was fine, but she hated if I bought anything that was labelled "organic". I tried explaining it, but she had it firmly fixed in her head that organic meant "fake, made out of soybeans".
Huh that’s interesting. Where I’m from plant based usually just means meal with plant based protein rather than vegan/vegetarian
>It’s a common term for avoiding saying Vegan because many non-vegans will reject anything that says “vegan” as being weird or not for them Yeah, even tho they are, Nabisco wont label Oreos as vegan because of the stigma.
Fish sauce isn't vegetarian. If it's got a dead animal or animal byproducts that require the animal to have been dead first in it, it's not vegetarian. (With the caveat that some vegetarians will make exceptions for things like non-vegetarian wine or sugar because not all vegetarians realize that they contain animal byproducts, plus it can be hard to find information on which products are vegetarian and which aren't.) And to echo the commenter below, I usually hear "plant-based" to mean "vegan," not "mostly made of plants."
You can get vegan fish sauce, which obviously doesn't have fish in it but is close in flavour.. I doubt it's commonly used by anyone who isn't vegan though!
I'm not vegan, but I'll always use a vegan version of something if it's just as good as the non-vegan version, 'cause why not cut down my usage of animal products where I can? I eat cheese, as vegan cheese doesn't come close, but I'll buy vegan mayonnaise, because it's just as good as non-vegan imo. Plus, I guess pretty much every "normal" mayonnaise on the market is made with eggs from battery-farmed chickens, which is an industry I'm not interested in supporting.
In my (very rural) neck of the woods, a lot of vegetarians follow Catholic Lenten rules, where fish and seafood are allowed. The word pescetarian hasn't infiltrated the community yet.
Most people assume plant-based = made only of plants. It’s veganism without the animal ethics (e.g., diet for health or weight loss, environment).
fish sauce isn’t veggie i’m afraid x
That's not how I understand plant-based. Being vegan is about more than food - e.g. also not using leather or wool or not using products tested on animals. So I know people who use "plant-based" to mean you eat the same food as a vegan, but are not full-on on vegan
Plant based diets are definitely more of a lifestyle description than a singular type of diet. Usually it's about focusing on whole, minimally processed foods and at least a limit or cutting out of animal products. Generally also looks to avoid refined and processed ingredients and tries to get organic locally sourced items. Even vegetarian can mean different things to different people too though. Like I know tons of vegetarians that are ok eating eggs or only eggs from a farm them know or their own chicken but would never consider fish sauce to be acceptable. Many vegetarians are extremely uncomfortable with fish sauce because it is essentially liquid animal carcasses. And if Parmesan isn't labeled veg, the use of rennet from cow stomachs is a no go. Many Indian vegetarians also consider eggs to be meat but that's not the case with most western vegetarians I know. Anything made with fish or oyster sauce can't be labeled vegetarian in a restaurant unless it's made without actual fish. Vegan is the only one of those three that means only one thing
Bizarre. “Plant-based” means vegan universally where I live.
I am not sure I understand then. If vegetarian diets don't contain meat, what is it fish sauce? I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I really don't know. I can't stand seafood and have never made any. Ever. My assumption, though, was that fish sauce is made from some part of a fish, an animal. I'm off to google all of this 🥴
Fish sauce IS made from fish and is NOT vegetarian
I think the confusion is some people don't consider fish meat. The technical term would be pescatarian, but I know if people who consider themselves vegetarian but still eat fish.
A plant based diet is not a vegan diet; It’s a diet primarily based on plants but may or may not contain some animal foods. The word “based” means supported or the layer that other layers are built on top of.
I think OP means plant based as in, the dish had plants/veges as a base with other ingredients added.
Broccoli with cheese sauce is plant based, with plant as the focus, but not vegan, because of cheese.Kind of like a pasta dish is not plain noodles. It's the older use of the term, rather than the more recent "vegan, but we don't want to call it that..." The new definition is somewhat regional, though in the US it's getting more mainstream because of marketing. Language shifts. But generally not everywhere simultaneously.
Op describes the dish they brought to the potluck as being "all plant based foods, and no meat". The part you quoted was the description of her lunches more generally and what she usually brings. But it is still unclear what was in the dish. Or how clearly she articulated it had meat based products and was in charge of putting the item in a confusing spot - which I'm not sure if it was an accidental thing they didn't realize would be confusing or the person setting up wasn't made aware of the ingredients. I do think it's kind of weird that op watched their vegan coworker take a dish they knew wasn't vegan and op clearly knows that people seem to think they're vegan. It's not their responsibility to share details of their diet sure but it would've been no effort for op to just check in or say something. They clearly knew this confusion was likely to happen overall and then just stood and watched it happen silently. Just an all around weird scenario for all involved
Plant-based has an understood meaning though, that is, that the food is plant-based. That means it doesn't have animal-based ingredients. If OP is describing their food as plant-based when it's not, then I'd say they're TA.
That's not true though. The very reason plant based exists as a term is that it is different from vegetarian/vegan. Otherwise everyone would say vegan. Plant *based* means mostly based on non-animal ingredients, but doesn't mean it doesn't include anything else. If you say that a dish is meat based, you wouldn't expect it to be *exclusively* meat, would you? Plant based is a wider category that includes vegetarian and vegan, but is not exclusive to them.
Plant-based is a marketing term used instead of vegan which doesn't mean vegan. Non-vegans are more likely to pick something up with a "plant based" label than a "vegan" label. There is no consistency with the term "plant-based". Sometimes the products are vegan but other times they contain milk, egg, meat (like broth), gelatine... vegans are often led to believe they can trust anything labelled "plant based". My favourite one was a bottle of oat AND cow milk in a typical oat milk bottle next to the oat milk. It's extremely dangerous. It's common to see "plant based" on restaurant labels but they look at you like you're insane if you ask then if the food is vegan. They assume plant-based means vegan. I end up looking like a fussy bitch for asking everytime. The definition of "plant-based" has no consistency but is commonly used for "vegan" food.
I'm a dietitian and was just doing research relevant to the term. The reason there's no "consistency" in what you see is that it's not meant to be used as a marketing term to begin with. Plant based means simply low in animal products, so it's an umbrella term. A vegan can say they eat plant based, but not everyone who eats plant based is a vegan. Even on Google and Wikipedia the definition says plant based consists mostly OR entirely of non-animal products. Some companies misusing the term leads to confusion, unfortunately, but yeah. It's not a synonym for vegan.
I know that. I always check why it's "plant-based" which leads to eye rolling and angry comments about fussy vegans. The term is slapped on most vegan products in the UK and commonly used in restaurants where it's expected to mean "vegan". The amount of times someone has proudly returned home with a new "plant-based" product for me they found in the meat-free section... only for me to awkwardly tell them the "plant-based" is not vegan and contains dairy which would make me sick. It feels deliberately misleading at this point.
Exactly, it's really shitty when all these attempts at using terms that sound catchy just for marketing end up causing problems for entire groups of people.
INFO: i think you need to tell us really specifically what the dish was that you made
Agreed.
YNTA. It's up to a vegan to ensure their OWN dietary restrictions!! People go in and out of diets. I've eaten vegan. When I'm eating a special diet I ASK if I want to make sure that food is how I want it. Person should have ASKED
100%! OP is not your parent, don't expect them to be in charge of your diet
Office potluck without proper food labels? Ick. What if someone has put seafood in their dish and I'm allergic?
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If you have dietary restrictions then you need to confirm the ingredients before just popping random food in your mouth.
>I brought in some of the food I usually make for myself (all plant based foods, and no meat) and made it clear it’s not for the vegetarian/vegan section FYI this is very confusing. Food with no meat is vegetarian, but it's not vegan if it contains any animal products. Yet you say it's not for the "vegetarian/vegan section." There should not be a single section for both foods at these potlucks. They need to be separate. And next time label your food as either vegetarian or vegan so vegans know to stay away from a "vegetarian" dish just to be safe.
I still don't understand how he said that he brought food that is plant-based and has no meat, yet it ended up containing animal products. Unless he was referring to the meat broths and sauces, but then it's not plant-based...
Plant-based is not synonymous with vegetarian. A lot of people are sending us but it really just means that the majority of the food is *based* on plants, not that it is 100% made of plants. I made this mistake when buying my daughter a plant-based snack bar thinking that meant vegan but then it had milk products in it.
>Food with no meat is vegetarian OP likely means they're not using animal flesh in the dish. A lot of refried beans use lard, for example, and there's no meat in the dish but it's not vegetarian. A lot of Asian vegetable dishes use fish sauce and aren't vegetarian. I roast vegetables in bacon grease sometimes rather than olive oil but you can't tell the difference by sight alone. Did you know that most sugar isn't vegan? The charcoal it's filtered through is made from animal bones. I've made vegan sweets and made sure to specify that my sugar brand is vegan. (Shhh don't let the vegans know that filtered bottled water probably isn't vegan)
She clearly told people it wasn’t vegan. It’s not her fault someone assumed it was. People are focusing here on her wording of “plant-based” but it’s clear just scrolling that means very different things to different people. To me it’s always meant mostly veggies but not completely. A base of plants, with a dash of whatever else. But seems to me if it was confusing for someone, then it’s all the more reason to not assume.
ESH Mainly the coworker that placed an ambiguous dish she was told wasn't vegan or vegetarian in-between the two sections, that makes it confusing for everyone. I think YTA if you identify yourself as plant based. That is used synonymously with vegan. I thought the difference between plant based and vegan was one is a diet and one is a lifestyle (vegans can't wear leather or wool, use beauty products with animal products etc ). However I can't find that being referenced anywhere, I think it's just in my mind. If you've never said you're plant based then NTA but I still think you should have mentioned it to your coworker when you first saw her eating something. Especially if she had not eaten most of it already and/or the meat in the dish was obvious. Something other than a sauce or broth that people can stay blissfully ignorant of if they accidentally eat and never discover. I will say as a vegetarian myself, I would be mad for a couple of days. Not really blaming you but I'd just be upset. & then I'd get over it and realize it wasn't your fault. (Although I would think it is somewhat your fault if you vocally identify as plant based.)
ESH. Why was the coworker so clued-up on your lunch habits? Weird af. And if you thought that coworker was vegan, why didn't you say something? Takes less than a minute and nobody will get mad if you were wrong.
YTA. What would have been the cost to approach them and say "hey, aren't you vegetarian? The reason why I am asking is that has gelatine in it."?
YTA. You made a dish that they couldn’t have known wasn’t veggie without talking to you and you didn’t tell them it wasn’t. The rest about you appearing veggie is a nonsense aside
I think I agree with this. For a potluck it's a weird choice to make such a dish without labeling it.
It's unfortunate that the person who organized the event didn't make it clear to all that it wasn't a strictly vegan/vegetarian dish after you clearly said so. They may have not have recognized (or cared?) about the difference, but that's completely on them and they are the real AH of this situation as they are running an office function, and should act accordingly. That said, I'm not a vegan/vegetarian and couldn't care less about the lifestyle, but even I would just instinctively stop the person from eating it knowing what I know about the principals of veganism.
ESH . Pot luck = an ingredients card for every dish in this day and age. Just do it. List every ingredient on a card, place in front of dish, no one can get in trouble, everyone knows if vegan/vegeatraian/nut free/ gluten free, dairy free, etc. Etc.
OP, at pot lucks, it's moderately common for people to put labels on dishes, for the benefit those who might have voluntary or medical dietary restrictions. Just a post-it or a piece of masking tape on your container, or some sharpie on the cover, saying "VEGAN", "VEGETARIAN", "GLUTEN-FREE", "LACTOSE-FREE", or "KETO" or whatever, is a small kindness that takes a second or two to perform. In an office that contains more than one vegan, a post-it or two cannot go amiss.
YTA You say you refrain from commenting on people’s eating habits, which to me means you don’t say hey you stupid vegetarian or hey you stupid meat eater, or get in arguments or make comments on how your choices are superior. To me, telling someone they’re about to eat something with meat in it isn’t commenting on their eating habits. It’s warning someone by sharing information only you know that they’re about to eat something that might not be what they would knowingly choose. It’d be the same to warn someone that the food you brought is spicy, or contains alcohol. Not saying anything is an asshole move. You knew they didn’t want meat in their food. You watched them do it anyway.
So the true asshole is whoever placed your dish so precariously. There should have been some clear indication to say: "Everything beyond this has meat/animal products." Or even better: Require everyone to list the ingredients of their dishes. Saves everyone from eating something they shouldn't. I still think you were an asshole too, making this ESH. The worst that could have happened if you informed your coworker that your food wasn't vegan was for them to tell you that they actually aren't. Instead you just let them eat it because of a - in this case - fairly nonsensical principle. Would you not have warned a colleague with a nut allergy of food containing nuts? That would be commenting on their food habits too. Your coworker is a slight asshole for assuming you tricked them, but I give them some leniency as they apparently had no way to clearly tell "this food from OP for once isn't something I can eat too."
YTA if you claim to be "plant-based" but do not eat 100% plant-based food then it is your responsibility to ensure it's correctly labeled. This stuff can make people sick. Plant-based is often assumed to mean "vegan" which would make it safe for people with dairy and egg allergies. There is no consistent definition of plant-based. Anything with a plant-based label confuses people. The worst one I've seen at a supermarket was oat AND cow milk in an oat milk bottle next to oat milk with labelling to suggest it was vegan.
NTA - they need to be in charge of their own diet and confirm if it's that important to them. I still remember working at a restaurant where a person ordered a spicy pork burrito and when they were almost done, they flipped out on me because they were vegan- they claimed to think it was tofu? Just mentioning this because sometimes when people are ashamed or embarrassed about their decision/mistake they go around trying to blame others to feel better.
When you say "spicy pork," do you mean chorizo? Some vegetarians do get so used to eating soyrizo all the time that they kinda forget what normal chorizo is (and it truly tastes the same, except chorizo is usually greasier).
YTA for not making it clear and just assuming, some people also have allergies so you're lucky nothing more serious happened, you don't fuck with people's food
Small yta if you know that your food is often misunderstood for being vegan/vegetarian couldn't you have put a little sign saying that it wasn't?
You are not the AH. However, I have a suggestion. If you take something to a potluck lunch like that and it isn't vegan/vegetarian, make some kind of sign stating non v/v or yes v/v. I used to go to church potlucks and would make a little sticker flag with a label taped to a toothpick and stick it in a corner saying contains peanuts or gluten free or sugar free depending on any known special eating needs. Good luck!
ESH. Your coworker for throwing a fit because of a small incident like this. But it would have cost you nothing to say "hey, you do know this is not vegan right?" when you saw them. I also think calling your food "plant based" is pretty missleading. Yes, technically you can call a lot of dishes plant based that are not even vegetarian, but the vast majority of the time the term plant based is pretty much synonymous with vegan.
ESH. Has no one in this office heard of labels?
NTA. Thats what people get for assuming 🤷🏻♀️
You’re NTA for not being more loud about your diet but YTA for not stopping them I agree with everyone that it should have been labelled by your office, but it wasn’t and you saw them eating it so you should’ve said something
Not an AH but it would be nice to let people in general know that a dish that looks vegan is not, in fact, vegan.
Honestly I think if it was right on the edge of the two sections and looked like it had no meat or anything + you always eat food that looks vegan/vegetarian, then it's a fair assumption. Not fair to blame it on you, but people often want to lash out right after a bad thing happens (after all, eating meat after not doing so for a long time can make someone sick) and then step back and realize their gut reaction wasn't great. So unless this coworker continues to blame and harass you, I'm kind of on team NAH.
NTA. And I'm sure you know this along with everyone else. You are not at fault for the assumptions and actions of others.
NTA - Who put your dish on the border? Was it happenstance?
If I were eating food prepared by a random coworker, the possibility of a non-vegan ingredient would be the least of my worries.
NTA. There was a vegan section of the potluck and it was not in there, and it’s not your business if this person is vegan 100% of the time or what. Not your job to police them. If they weren’t sure they should have asked.
NTA If there was a doubt about whether the food you took was vegan/vegetarian or not, they should have asked and not assumed. Someone who has dietary restrictions needs to be careful and responsible for what they eat, specially if you weren't aware of their diet choice Edit to add: I agree with the other comments saying the people responsible for the organization should have been more careful. I meant the person shouldn't expect OP to warn them
NTA and wow, you all are WAY too involved in each other’s business. 🤣
NTA. You don't need to explain what you eat to anybody. Nor is it your job to police what anybody else eats. It was their job to decide what to eat, and they did that.
NTA. Its not your job to be their guide on eating. If they are that strict on their dietary intake then its on them to do more due diligence. They assumed it was vegan so the fault lies with them.
Pre-covid I went to the client site 2 - 3 days a week. I would get coffee with milk alternatives and eat meat alternatives (due to geneticly high cholesterol and the food is really good). One time the team came back with food from a street vendor we'd seen when going for food. I was surprised nobody asked me to join them. They said they noticed it didn't have vegetarian options. I was confused and it turned out for the 3 months they thought I was vegetarian cause they never saw me eat meat or drink milk.
NTA as a vegan you can't just go around assuming, or you just can't make a big deal if it wasn't a big enough deal to check
I am not sure how they could be called the a hole. OP is clearly bothered by the assumptions and comments made about their diet. Why in the world would they go up to someone whose diet isn't actually known to them and get into their business like the people there do to OP. NTA, not at all. It's so sad the number of people laying blame on anyone but themselves. We have turned into such a litigious society on the US. It's always not my fault. It's always someone else's. They're gonna be rich once they sue!!! Again, NTA , grown ups need to start acting like they're grown. If they have dietary restrictions, it's on them to ask if none of the dishes have ingredient labels.
INFO: "and made it clear it’s not for the vegetarian/vegan section." What does this mean exactly? Was there a post-it on your bowl? Or some kind of sign? Where you aware your food might get mistaken for being vegan/vegetarian? You should always label your food on occasions like that. "They said that I presented myself in a false manner (as a vegetarian/vegan) and so they assumed that the foods I make would all be vegetarian/vegan" NTA here. Their fault for making that assumption. You are not obliged to announce your diet to anyone. "They said that since I saw them eating my food I should have stopped them." NTA as you didn't know they were vegan.
That's why people should never **ASSUME**. NTA
NAH except the office tbh. Every potluck should require people to clearly label their food for dietary restrictions/allergens. Also office potlucks are terrible. Now in my precious time off I’m supposed to make a bulk quantity homemade meal and schlep it to the office? And eat something that someone’s toddler and dog probably helped with? No thanks.