CHAPTER 18 - How to Create a Vegetarian Supportive Environments At Work and At Play
You now have a lot of valuable tools at your disposal – you know how to plan meals, you know what nutrients you need to keep your body healthy, and you know how to feed your vegetarian child. You even know how to answer questions from others and make sure you have plenty of healthful food to eat at home, at school, and at work.
Making your new lifestyle work at home and in the office requires a lot of flexibility, good humor, and planning. By this point, though, you should feel up to the task! You’ve made excellent choices for your health and your future, and how you integrate it into the rest of your life will not only affect your relationships, but also how others view vegetarianism.
Meat-eaters and meat-free – managing a mixed marriage
All marriages are about compromise. You choose someone to spend the rest of your life with and, as time passes, you often find yourselves negotiating to find a middle ground that you can live with. One of you is messy, but the other is neat. He loves reality television, she adores opera. One partner may be a social butterfly but the other’s happy to stay home every night with a good book. Married couples figure out how to adapt to such differences, and a vegetarian/omnivore marriage has to negotiate many more obstacles than most.
It’s understandable, when you’re single and dating, to believe that your ideal partner will share all of your values. But that’s unrealistic – no two individuals are exactly alike, and the day-to-day struggle of paying bills, doing laundry, getting to work and raising children can sometimes make even the smallest difference seem enormous. As the popularity of vegetarianism increases, so do the number of "mixed marriages" between meat-eaters and non-meat eaters. You and your spouse may agree on a lot of things, but still disagree on how to eat.
The key to making it work is acceptance of each other’s choices. If you judge your spouse harshly for not joining you in your vegetarian journey, you may be turning them off entirely, closing the door to them making that step themselves in the future. No one likes to be told that they’re "bad," particularly if they’re simply eating the same diet as most of the other people they see every day.
Try to keep in mind that your choice to become vegetarian was a personal one, and it has to be for them, too. You can’t control what your spouse eats – but you can control how you behave towards them.
Cherish the issues in your marriage that you agree on. There are probably far more of those than there are issues on which you don’t see eye-to-eye.
Acknowledge that your spouse’s diet isn’t meant to hurt you. If your partner eats meat, it isn’t a choice designed to make your life unhappy or more complicated. Try to respect their decision, whether it is based on ethical principles, on convenience or on habit.
Try to get your partner to compromise on certain foods. See if you can get them to eat soy hot dogs, veggie burgers and non-dairy cheese at home.
Never attack your spouse’s point of view, especially in public. Belittling your partner will only cause them to be resentful and more resistant to vegetarianism.
Try to find restaurants where you can eat together. Choose venues that offer both meat dishes and vegetarian options, so that you can enjoy a fine meal together.
Play an active role in shopping and preparing meals. Cook a variety of tasty, appealing meals so that your partner can see that the diet isn’t boring. Buy a few cookbooks and try new recipes to keep things interesting.
Be a positive role model. Allow your cheerful attitude and good health serve as an example of how great vegetarianism can be.
Don’t talk endlessly about your diet. If your partner is interested, the subject will come up naturally – but don’t lecture.
If you’ve agreed not to eat meat at home, accept that your spouse may eat meat sometimes when they’re not with you. Again, you can’t control what they eat, and nagging doesn’t help.
Eating together is one of the great pleasures of any relationship. Negotiate a menu plan that’s acceptable to both of you, and then enjoy your meals together!
Being vegetarian at work
If you work in a corporate environment, food is as much a part of your job as voice mail, computers and fluorescent lighting. Lunch is where you network, make deals and discuss contracts. Looking and acting professional in such situations is vital.
As a vegetarian this can pose a unique challenge. If everyone around you is ordering steak or chicken Caesar salads and you’re not eating much, it can call undue attention to your eating habits. Suddenly, no one’s talking about the deal – they’re talking about why you aren’t eating your lunch!
More and more people are choosing meatless lifestyles, but that doesn’t mean that being a vegetarian at work is easy. You’ve made a lifestyle choice dictated by your health and your ethics, but you have to walk the fine line of also fitting in with your colleagues. After all, if you’re too independent of a thinker, they might not believe that you’re still a team player. When you’re at work you want the focus to be on your work – not on what you eat. The same grace, good humor and tact that you use to deal with family and friends is even more important in the workplace.
