Vegetarians, vegans, and minorities

[Ginger Tea]

hospitals

This all depends on the hospital in question, most in the UK now go via 3rd party caterers having removed the kitchen and staff due to budget restraints or other factors.

So instead of cooking the food there and then and hoping you can get something nice and vegan made up especially that isn't the same thing day in day out, it's bought in almost like a ready meal.

[Victoria J]

nice

Not convinced of that.

I am in the UK (I need to fill in my profile, I forgot). It is a very small specialist hospital where the cook came to apologize, but my mother was also in Barts for a period and that was truly awful. Vegetarian food was often hugely fatty, and in one case appeared to be 2 random meals mixed together (can't remember the full horror - along the lines of curry and spaghetti though).

My friends mother was recently in Whipps Cross hospital and the food may have been better there. Her very elderly mother wasn't happy because there wasn't enough Indian type food she would have made at home. But the main problem was apparently that the nurse kept eating food before patients could

Maybe one is too small and the other too big to do the catering thing ?

Asking for vegan might be an idea though. It would remove the insane amounts of cheese. It just seems wrong to pretend to have a dietary requirement you don't to get special treatment.

It is very frustrating to see them serve her such unhealthy food though. She has been advised to lose weight to help with her (unrelated) health problems and to have better outcomes from operations and has done an amazing job with a lot of hard work. So either she is undoing that or she is not eating and therefore not getting the energy needed to recover.

When she was in for 2 weeks I spent a fortune on those little plastic salad-ish things they sell to people to eat at lunch at work. Fruit mixes, salads, couscous, Marks and Spencers had a nice falafel and hummous mini snack. Healthy and while they are in general a rip off they are also a tempting treat for someone sick. (And visiting after work didn't leave me the time to cook or prepare food). Punnets of berries too.

They should have berries and the more snacky fruit at hospitals. They don't seem to know anything beyond bananas and apples.

Victoria J

[Ginger Tea]

Like I said in my other post "hope you can get something nice made up" from the in house kitchen, just because they cook food there and then doesn't mean you will get much choice, if the chef isn't very knowledgeable on vegan meals then just be thankful they don't put any meat in them

Whereas those that buy theirs in from a 3rd party, they might have vegetarian options as a rule, it could be a case of one choice per meal and any vegan/kosher/halal/GF meals etc, which are not part of the default menu, would have to be bought in and depending on how slow the chain of communication can be, even though you are admitted that day and have nothing suitable, by the next day something will be ordered in for the duration of your stay, the other extreme, by the time the ward nurse incharge of this asks the main orderer, who then orders from the supplier, who knows you might be discharged by then.

As for the nurse eating the food before the patients, was that raised with her supervisor? I don't care how good the food is, no, just no.

[Nyoibo]

I'm going to try and give this from the perspective of my girlfriend, she's a vegetarian, originally she was a vegan, but when she was studying she was trainging basically the equivalent of an elite athlete or more (she was studying at NICA and was training anywhere from 10-14 hours a day) she was told she needed more protein or she wouldn't be able to keep going, she changed to being a vegetarian without compromising her beliefs. I and her family are very much meat eaters (sunday roast every sunday) she doesn't try and impose her choices on anyone else (except not kissing me until I brush my teeth ) when we go out she doesn't expect there to be vegetarian everywhere to cater for something that is her concious choice. She's also extremely allergic to gelatine but she also doesn't expect people to cater to that either, she's just careful about what is in her food and checks to make sure no gelatin is in it, she can't help that, but if you make a choice to live a certain lifestyle the onus is on you to adhere to that lifestyle, not demand that others conform to yours.

[draco664]

A few of them said, "I have the hardest time explaining to the people at McDonald's that I want a hamburger without the hamburger patty. I get the strangest looks whenever I do that!" Several others agreed.

I remember one time when I worked at Maccas, a lady came in and asked for a big mac with the meat on the side. She immediately explained the meat was for her dog.

I didn't care, I just called out to the guys out back that we needed a big mac with the meat on the side.

I went out the back a couple of minutes later to see them stuffing the patties down the side of the burger collar.

[guywithashovel]

I went out the back a couple of minutes later to see them stuffing the patties down the side of the burger collar.

By burger collar, I'm assuming you mean the box the Big Mac comes in?

I don't think it's sucky to make such a request. Thing is, the people I was talking about in my earlier post acted smugly amused over the fact that the clerk did a double take or got a surprised expression when they asked for a hamburger without the hamburger patty. I'm just not sure what else they expected since, like I said earlier, that patty is pretty much what makes the hamburger a hamburger.

[HYHYBT]

Between the styrofoam Big Mac boxes of the 80's and the corrugated ones we have now, for a while they tried packaging Big Macs in paper wrappers. And to hold them together, there was a paper ring (one end hooked into the other, like those crowns you can get from Burger King). You make the sandwich within the ring, then wrap it up.

I'd have put the patties in a 4-piece nugget box instead...

[wolfie]

When I was growing up, I heard the phrase "The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease" a lot and it always annoyed me that the people who whined and complained the most got special treatment just to shut them up. Placating special interest groups just to shut them up is a bad habit to get into. No one is preventing companies from making dairy/lactose free chocolate and carob covered raisens and peanuts. This isn't a case of unfair treatment. It's simply a case of what's profitable for the producer vs. what's not. 8-10% and 0.25-.50% of the population is an extremely small market share and not making a product for such a small group isn't likely to hurt the manufacturers profit margin at all.

I've heard of a Japanese variation on the "whoever does something in order to get noticed will receive special treatment" theme, which would be appropriate for sucky customers: "The Nail That Sticks Up Gets Hammered Down".

As for the non-dairy chocolate, it's my understanding that virtually all chocolate-covered raisins and peanuts are covered in milk chocolate - which obviously contains dairy ingredients. What gets to me is that virtually all confectioners are putting milk ingredients in DARK CHOCOLATE. My brother is a vegan, and one family Christmas tradition is to get chocolate oranges. Unfortunately, a few years ago Terry's started putting milk ingredients in their dark chocolate oranges. Two years ago, I happened to spot a "knockoff" brand (Florida Tropic) at a truck stop, and their dark chocolate didn't have dairy ingredients - problem solved for one year. Last year, however, I couldn't find anyone locally who carried this product (I contacted the manufacturer - one Canadian distributor didn't carry Florida Tropic, only other products by Sweetworks, and the other was a grocery store chain that carried the Terry's oranges).

I had a friend that would order her burgers with the patty on the side. She ate meat, but she didn't like the meat McDonald's uses. So she'd get a burger, toss the patty to her dog, and fill the bun with her fries and some tartar sauce to go with the special sauce already on it.

Having eaten at "Chez Ronald" a few times, I'd recommend reporting her to the SPCA.

[Hyena Dandy]

"The Nail That Sticks Up Gets Hammered Down".

Yeah, sadly, that one is more saying "Don't try to be better" than "Don't be an asshole."

[Ginger Tea]

Milk in the plain chocolate? the fuck ...

Now I know most chocolate bars and stuff are milk chocolate I do like plain chocolate too, although it's not high on my shopping list at the moment as I really like choc-hazle nut at the moment, but if they did it in plain I would buy it, unless its a shite brand as the choc-hazle nut milk chocolate is nice, their plain is lacking, its no Bournvile but haveing said that its way cheaper.

If the filling was dairy free, they could always do a trial run of Snickers/mars/Kitkat dark chocolate and promote it as vegan. I think they did with kitkat, I know they did orange and mint options for a while, but only on the fingers but I'm a Chunky fan myself.

[insertNameHere]

At my university we had "Meatless Meatballs" at which point I asked the cook "WTF!???!" they said they need to be fair to the vegetarians at which point i said that is so fucking stupid, I mean really, I am all for, meatless tofu balls, tofu balls, garden balls.
But at no point should you sell meatless meatballs that is just fucking absurd bordering on ridiculous, you can't remove the definition of what makes something what it is, and still use the name. It just upsets me when meatballs are desecrated.

However, I went with the I don't like the thought of it I won't buy it. Other than ranting here, I didn't go on some rampage to have this atrocity fixed because the carnivores were taking offense to it (should have).

To each his own, if you want to write a letter to suggest a market that is fine but demanding that you be represented because your discriminated by the product line is pointless. I can see if a vegan wanted to work in a meat packing plant and was denied, but not that the meat packing plant has nothing to offer the vegan in terms of client base.

[Rapscallion]

Milk in the plain chocolate? the fuck ...

Emulsifier - makes it nice and smooth. Some places use lecithin - soya or sunflower based. Milk's cheaper.

If the filling was dairy free, they could always do a trial run of Snickers/mars/Kitkat dark chocolate and promote it as vegan. I think they did with kitkat, I know they did orange and mint options for a while, but only on the fingers but I'm a Chunky fan myself.

Well, that's at the heart of my thread. Economies of scale work towards it being more costly to do a small run than a large one, and effectively the vegan version is going to cost a huge amount more. Also, until recently the decent-tasting vegan stuff wasn't around - much of it is pretty vile, quite frankly. Even if a good vegan alternative was widely available, would people even switch from what is familiar?

Rapscallion

[Ginger Tea]

I've no idea on the production run of the orange and mint kitkat's or how long the stock was on sale for, but they have done it in the past for those that like orange and mint chocolate, a (preferably milk free) dark chocolate would be a nice 4th option to the punters.

the insdies of snickers/mars/others however I cannot guarantee vegan friendly, but as I dont have a religous moral or dietry restraint, I don't care that much, but I would like to try a dark chocolate snickers etc.

[AdminAssistant]

I've seen dark chocolate snickers on this side of the pond, but rarely. They're delish!

[Andara Bledin]

Even if a good vegan alternative was widely available, would people even switch from what is familiar?

History says no.

Every blind taste test had people liking new Coke better than classic Coke, but classic Coke was what people grew up with, so even though objectively they liked the new version better, they wouldn't drink it. However, if they'd changed it on the sly, I suspect that almost nobody would have noticed.

^-.-^