Respecting the Family Vegetarian at Your Holiday Dinner Table

Vegetarians are highly adaptive people. Many of them have become accustomed to eating what they can - often the side dishes - when invited to dinner at the home of someone who doesn't adequately love or respect them enough to make an entree that is OK with them. For a family member, friend or infrequent guest, a simple display of respect for them and their beliefs would be to have at least one vegetarian menu item prepared that honors their values and chosen preferences.

Our daughter was still in High School when she decided that she was a vegetarian. She simply stopped eating animal flesh one day and has sustained that choice now for about 20 years. Neither her husband nor two children are vegetarians. My son-in-law, by his own choice and the children because their mother will not make a choice like that for them, but will wait until they are old enough to make an informed choice for themselves. Our daughter respects everyone else's choices and models, in a way we clinical types call "parallel process," the need to show respect by honoring the choices of others - even when they are different than our own.

A couple of brief explanations seem important here: 1) A "Vegan" is a person who does not eat or use any animal products, including milk, cheese, leather, etc.; 2) A "Vegetarian" is a person who does not eat animal flesh (of ANY kind, including fish and chicken - after all, they are animals, too!); and 3) An "Omnivore" is a person who eats everything, including meats. I have encountered a goodly amount of confusion about these basic definitions since all three terms are used here, I hope that simple clarification is helpful.

We have, as a consequence of our daughter's choice, developed a food preference style that involves eating less flesh and the habit of always preparing a vegetarian menu (or at least a vegetarian option) whenever she and the family (or others) are at our home for a meal. I think this is a thoughtful accommodation motivated by respect and love. This is a strategy I recommend most highly for anyone who has a vegetarian in their circle of loved ones.