Eating Non-vegan Food Offered By Family?

[ThatNerdyScienceGirl]

If you went to visit your family, or boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend, etc, and they made a non-vegan dinner with eggs or milk, would you eat it, or risk hurting their feelings?

[Cirion Spellbinder]

Most of my family already knows I am vegan, so this is unlikely to happen. However, if it did, I would probably reject the offer and explain why. Whatever emotional damage that could be done would be trivial.

[brimstoneSalad]

I would not eat it, but I understand why others do. That said, I'm less picky about something like honey or trace ingredients.

If they misunderstood vegetarian/vegan, it could be reasonable to explain it to them, and say you'll eat it "just this once" since they went through the trouble to make something special for you, since you want them to understand you appreciate the effort.

I don't recommend having a non-vegan S.O., however.
That either means you are unable to communicate with your S.O. properly (i.e. you are logical, but your S.O. emotional and unable to understand your logical argument, or the other way around) and so have a relationship fraught with communication issues, OR you have been able to communicate it clearly and your S.O. just doesn't care about the same things you do/is not really interested in being a better person (in which case, you should think carefully about finding somebody who is, and will work with you to become better people together, becoming closer rather than farther apart as you grow).
Note: That doesn't mean don't "date" non-vegans, but just don't get serious with anybody who isn't making serious gestures and changes in that direction (where there's good reason to believe he or she will go vegan, and he or she has clearly indicated a strong interest in it).

[Seachants]

I would not eat it, but I think, at least for the categories of people you listed, eating the non-vegan food vs. hurting their feelings are not the only two options in my case. My immediate family knows I'm vegan. If my brother offered me non-vegan food, it would probably be to mock me. (He is mostly anti-vegan or at least talks like it.) His feelings would probably not be hurt by my not eating it.

My mom is now going vegan as of this Thanksgiving, so if she were to offer me non-vegan food, it would be an innocent mistake, like by using store-bought bread with cow milk in it or pasta with eggs in it. She would probably feel both disappointed and glad that I let her know it was non-vegan and would probably eat it only so the food doesn't go to waste. I wouldn't advise her not to eat it herself but would share my observation, eat what I want, and focus on positive reinforcement for how she made all the other great food. I don't think her feelings would be hurt by my not eating it, as in her feeling sad that I somehow put down her efforts; she would probably just feel disappointed that it's sometimes hard to avoid non-vegan ingredients. We would probably just talk about how it's not always practical to avoid trace ingredients we don't want. I've seen how disappointment can be easily replaced by eagerness to find something new that is totally vegan.

Whether a friend makes a non-vegan dinner for me is not applicable to me, because I don't have non-vegan friends (though I'm friendly acquaintances with many). I don't think I can be friends with an anti-vegan, but I could be friends with a non-vegan whose thinking is already consistent with veganism but just hasn't thought about the topic much, if at all. I would use my not eating the food from that type of friend as an opportunity to plant a seed of thought. I also don't have a boyfriend, so that's not applicable to me. However, I would not have a non-vegan boyfriend, or at least one who isn't mostly vegan. I would deal the situation like how I do with my mom, regards innocent mistakes.

Sometimes clients offer me food and drinks (like coffee with non-vegan milk or cream). I don't accept them for professional reasons, but I also stated a personal once: "No, thanks, I'm vegan." The client, who said that she's an ex-vegetarian, said, "You don't eat meat. You don't drink [alcohol]" and something else she seemed to admire about me, but I don't remember what, followed by, "You're making me feel bad." I think what she said is a compliment. I don't feel bad when other people say that they feel bad, in those situations. It's like when I ordered a veggie sandwich at a deli, and some stranger ahead of me said to put spinach on his meat and cheese sandwich, saying, "She's making me feel bad." At least feeling bad, and seeing a model of what to do about it, seemed to result in him doing something right. By not eating the non-vegan food, we can non-verbally model the behavior we want to see, especially if there are some non-vegan foods as part of the dinner or elsewhere in the kitchen to eat.