Slashfood today had an interesting article about food and relationships. The article posed the question whether a relationship can truly work if one person has a restrictive diet. I have a little personal experience in this area, I once dated someone that claimed to be on a vegan diet, and to be perfectly honest, eating with her sucked. At the time I played the game and lied and said “vegetarian food is good” or “I don’t mind not eating meat if it bothers you,” Deep inside I knew my palate was crying.
First most of these vegan places are usually very dogmatic, I don’t know what it is about the lifestyle but it attracts people that usually have a grab bag of extreme political views. Its not enough to just avoid eating meat and dairy, you need to constantly reinforce this choice through statistics and pseudo science. The second thing is that most of the vegan food out there tastes awful, its not that its lacking meat ingredients its bad because it lacks much of the seasonings and cooking techniques that are time tested to make delicious food. The third problem to usually arise is that people that claim these views are critical of other people that don’t have the same diet as they do. Although most claim to be open-minded thinkers, eating meat with them is a constant struggle with comments and strange looks. I can’t tell you how many times I had to hear how “better” you feel internally by not eating meat. Is so funny because most of these people lack a frame of reference to determine if they truly feel any different w/meat or w/o meat. My favorite story that all vegetarians (or vegans) like to throw out is the old story about how when they “tried” to eat meat it made them violently sick. I think that’s the biggest load of horseshit I’ve ever heard! I know all my carnivorous brethren out there feel me on that point.
In conclusion, I think people of two opposing diets can work but only in one regard. Someone will need to eventually compromise and not really care about what they eat. In my case I eventually thought the chick was psycho (unrelated to the vegan diet) so the relationship didn’t last, but to be honest: I care a lot about what I eat and I don’t think its fair that we have to cancel the Zuni Cafe reservation to eat at Cafe Gratitude (I’ll have to save the review of this disaster for another time.) So all you self-described vegetarians out there dating a full fledged carnivore, Good Luck!
