Vegan Forum

What do you tell people who make fun of us for being vegetarians? It happens anywhere anytime. You may should face such kind of problem. How you tackle that? austin dental

I usually don't give a response, if a person feels the need to tease someone about their choices, they are the ones feeling insecure. I just raise my eyebrows and continue whatever other conversation i was having. Now, if someone asks me a question, i will happily answer it (even the annoying questions where they think they're being clever). Usually the teasing comes down to them feeling threatened.

Nice respond aislinnciarrai... as for me, i just tell them that it is my choice and i love what i am...

I have to be honest, i'm not sure if it's my persona or confidence in being a vegan but i seldom if ever encounter any teasing, perhaps people can sense that i am not the kind of person who tolerates being teased, lol i am certainly not a violent or angry person though.

Except there was this one time that was really kind of disturbing for me. i wasn't teased, it was more that i felt threatened and challenged by this man, but this guy i worked with at a regrettable job i once had found out that i didn't eat any meat and i guess that offended him. One day i went into work (this job had the most horrible environment with the worst kind of people) and the guy tells me he needs to talk with me about something. Later in the day we were in the break room together and I confront him, he then goes on to say if cooking some eggs and bacon for a Sunday breakfast in the break room for the guys at work would bother me. I explained to him that it wouldn't bother me (i would have been far away from that room if there was meat being cooked in it), that my decision to not eat animals is a personal choice and i don't try to impose it on anyone (who's not friendly, open, or receptive). He then got really feisty with me as if i was challenging his values and started describing in a threatening way how he would hog-tie and pig and butcher it himself. This was a big scary lookin' dude and it was just a disturbing experience, but after going through that i don't think any sort of 'teasing' could bother me after fearing for my well-being having been cornered alone in a crummy ass room with this confrontational man.

just thought i'd share the only time i've ever been 'teased' for being a vegan.

Hello level5vegan,
I am just curious how did you react to the Scary guy. Did you just stay and listen till he finished what he had to say?

Yes I listened to every last word he said. I had no idea he was going to say this to me so it came kind of fast and surprising. It was very uncomfortable and I did want to walk out of the room but that would have been rude I guess lol even if he was being aggressive to me. Haha I will explain the whole situation:

I was an airplane fueler at a major airport, got the job when i was in a bad position in life and only had it for about 3 months but almost all the employees for the fueling company were like something out of a nightmare lol, i don't know how such a workplace could even exist. It was a difficult time in my life and i know it happened for a reason but that incident in particular made me almost cry. Probably because i was never challenged by a meat eater like that before, not teased or criticized, he saw no holes in me to criticize my veganism and so this was so foreign to him i guess that he took offense and felt a need to defend himself. The man scared me before this by his appearance and demeanor alone, but when this happened I felt so helpless and really did almost cry.

I have never ever been teased about being a vegan though.

I would only assume that they are insincere and immature. Perhaps they are denying a "truth?" Anyway, there's no need to fuel an argument. I would be wasting my energy on them.

I found teasing stopped as I got older. Now I [very occasionally] get someone trying to wind me up, but it's usually not serious. I just say stuff like "my body doesn't really need the meat - I had enough when I was younger for a lifetime!" or start relaying stories about when I worked in the burger factory... At worst, I have to say "Do you have a problem with how I live my life?"

Sometimes people are scared that you're going to make a fuss if they eat meat in front of you, or cook meat in the same microwave. Once they see that I don't mind, that takes the pressure off

I had a bad experience at work too - I told my colleagues I was vegetarian and one of them just said "Oh, well that's the last barbeque we can have as a group then." I just told him not to be silly - of course you can have veggie barbeque's! But some of them still seemed to think I was being childish and trying to disrupt the group/team atmosphere of the department. These people would victimise anyone for being different in any way, though - if I wasn't vegetarian, they would have found something else to complain about - so it's their problem for being narrowminded and unprofessional. They lost a lot of good employees

People familiar with me usually get mocked in return, because no matter who you are, there's some defect about you that makes you vulnerable to jokes, and I'm usually more clever than would-be mockers. Total strangers, well it doesn't come up often, and when it does, I ignore the criticism. It's none of their business. I just use my food coupons and move on with my life.

_____________________________
I am a health nut!

Hi,
there is always a debate between the vegetarians and non vegetarians,but this is true that people make fun of the vegetarians,because they have a opinion that,people who are vegetarian are not strong as the non-vegi,but they don't know that the main power source for the body is carbohydrates which can consume from the vegetarian food also,
Cheers For The Vege..

Hi!

I smile and say: thank you for your attention and views but this is my body and this is my life+ you are welcome to share this conscious,mindful choice.

Normal people tease vegans because it is fun and vegans can't usually deal with it.

I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying why.

I don't see what there is to tease about it's a preference!
Anyways - I wanted to share a promotion with a book I've been meaning to get and it has stuff for vegans too!
It's a book called Full-A Life without dieting and it's by Michael Snyder.
There is over $200 of free stuff you get if you buy the book in the next day or so here is the link if you're interested
http://www.thefullbook.com/amazonpromotion.html

I didn't know spambots came in human flavour!

It turns out that they do.

Hi there,

I've been vegetarian for a little over a year now, what all I eat, probably isn't the healthiest, I only eat protein once or twice a week. my teeth are health, I got my braces off over the summer, I brush my teeth 3 times a day, there wasn't a thing wrong with them. Today after school I was eating a banana and peanut butter, and I felt something on one of my molars, so I picked at it, thinking it was food, and it was actually a crack in that tooth, and the piece came out, it's not huge, probably 1/4th of my tooth, and it doesn't hurt. My mother already made an appointment with my dentist on Thursday. She also brought up that it could be the diet that I've been eating. Does anybody know if being vegetarian could be the cause of that?

Thanks and regards,
- Robin Hood.
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Proteethwhiteningworld.com

Drink a glass of milk a day but not too much more and you should be fine so long as you keep up a good dental routine.

No, being vegetarian wouldn't cause a tooth to crack. Actually milk has been shown to WEAKEN your bones. The dairy industry did a fine job of promoting mass misinformation for decades about how milk is great for your bones and can help you lose weight (both false).

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionso ... -and-milk/

Milk will not help you if you consume too much of it but that can be said about anything at all.

recently my mom called me a vegan freak (im in high school btw) and a bunch of people have told me i need mental help cuz im a vegan :p but who cares?! theyr gonna die of a heart attack or somethin and im gonna live a long healthy vegan life. woohoo!!! i dont really care what anyone thinks because i know what i am doing is right. and yeah, it hurts when someone who is supposed to care about you or someone who you care about calls you a freak, but in the long run its not gonna matter anymore. keep the veg alive!!!

The fact that you talk about your own mother as well as your peers having a fatal heart attack in such a casual manner may indicate that you do actually need some mental help. Perhaps your mother was justified in saying what she said if you made your offensive attitude known to her.

I hate it. I actually try to avoid bringing up the subject and when it's absolutely necessary and only to close-minded people I'll use the cop-out and say it's for this "New Diet I'm Trying", this is to my really old-fashioned family or other people who are very set in their ways, but to other people I'm more open about it and try to keep an enlightened example rather than an in-your-face sort of standard.

But yeah, People tell me it makes no difference to which I say "If you can't do everything it doesn't mean you should do nothing" and that there's certain things I need in my body and I say "Cholesterol, Diabetes and Bacteria are none of those things" and then they say "God made animals to be eaten" or "We're at the top of the food chain for a reason" and I say "God didn't make animals to suffer like THIS" and "Then we should evolve past surviving on dead things", Some people won't see any other way though and get off on thinking Vegetarianism equals being weak or ignorant.

If one of your arguments somehow stipulates that eating dead animals is somehow less evolved than eating dead plants then I think I understand why people are teasing you.

AdamD wrote:The fact that you talk about your own mother as well as your peers having a fatal heart attack in such a casual manner may indicate that you do actually need some mental help. Perhaps your mother was justified in saying what she said if you made your offensive attitude known to her.

woah, there. okay i sounded kinda crazy there. but i really don't have a problem and i wasn't serious about the heart attack thing. i was just trying to emphasize the point that meat is bad for you. i'm not offensive towards anyone who eats meat - if you knew me, you'd see that i promise. let's try to be supportive of everyone and not go around telling people they need mental help.

A few people occasionally tease me, but it only strengthens my convictions about being a vegetarian.
Whatever they say, or whatever arguments they offer, I can usually offer some words to make them think about their meat-eating lifestyle.

But generally most people are, at the least, appreciative. And some are interested and think that it's good, but say that they cannot be a vegetarian.Often they comment that it's healthy.