A reader writes:
I work in a small workplace, we’re about 40 employees. When I started at the company about five years ago, I started ordering granola bars and some treats. Then I started adding on some fizzy drinks and then progressed to some other snacks, like nuts, fruits, and cookies. None of this is supposed to be the only food people eat, but it’s nice to have some quick to grab in the middle of a busy day. I have an employee now who manages the stocking of this, plus coffee, tea, milk, and cream.
An issue has arisen because we have a coworker who is vegan and he’s decided that we need to stop bringing in what he deems to be unhealthy snacks. Which are basically any processed foods.
He’s brought this up to me, to my employee, and to our Health and Safety committee in their quarterly meeting.
He obviously has strong beliefs about what people should be eating. When he came to me about it, I told him that we are all adults and that everyone has the right to choose what food they wish to eat.
What I wish I had said to him is that unsolicited health advice is not okay. People are not coming to work to be lectured on what he believes is healthy eating. I don’t make him listen to rants about why he should eat meat, because these are individual choices that people need to make.
On top of this, I think we need to respect that many people have complicated relationship with food, and he is trying to put his nutrition beliefs on others in a space that should be not about this.
He’s also made unsolicited remarks about what coworkers are eating, to coworkers who were not discussing food in any way.
While I believe he has good intentions, I think he’s overstepping. What is the best way to tell him to keep his beliefs to himself (on top of the fact that he’s not a trained nutritionist)?
I just want a good way to shut him down that’s not too confrontational, because he does make me want to be.
Yeah, you absolutely need to shut him down. He’s being rude and obnoxious, and because it’s happening at work, his coworkers are a captive audience for it. No one has asked for his evaluation of their diets, and he needs to respect people’s autonomy and privacy and stay out of their food choices.
For the record, that would be true even if he were a nutritionist. Unless he were their nutritionist, it would still be overstepping and out of line to go around critiquing what people eat. (In fact, here’s some fun reading: my company’s pushy new dietician won’t leave me alone, and the update.)
I’m not entirely sure whether you’re this guy’s manager or not, but I think you are. (I hope you are!) If so, sit down with him and say this: “I should have been clearer when we last talked about this. I need you to stop commenting on other people’s food choices, unless they actively and specifically request your critique. You are welcome to have whatever private opinions you’d like about what other people eat, but you cannot continuing critiquing their diets in our office. It’s unwelcome, people deserve to be able to come to work without having to fend that off, and it’s going to affect your working relationships with people.” (I deleted that clause because it’s better not to muddy the waters; just stick with “you need to stop.”)
If he brings up the office-provided snacks again, you should say, “If there are specific snacks that you would like us to add to what we’re providing, you can absolutely submit suggestions for them. I am open to making additional things available, but we’re not going to restrict what we provide based on one person’s preferences.” You might add, “It’s becoming disruptive to continue bringing this up, so I need you to accept that that’s the final answer.”
If you’re not his manager and he’s just a coworker who you have no authority over, the framing would be more like this: “I want to ask you to stop commenting on other people’s food choices. I don’t know if you realize how often you do it, but people deserve to be able to come to work without having their diets critiqued, and I think you’re really alienating people. That’s before we even get into how fraught food issues can be for people, which isn’t something anyone should have to share to be left alone.” (There’s additional advice here if he’s not someone you manage.)
While I believe he has good intentions
Sorry, where are the good intentions here, exactly?
Yeah, I was going to say the exact same thing. These aren’t good intentions, these are narcissistic tendencies.
He’s more likely to convert his co-workers to cannibalism than being vegan.
Funny
He’d go down better that way
Hey when your soccer team’s plane crashes into the Canadian Rockies, you take what you can get.
Wins the internets.
There’s nothing here that indicates narcissism, and it would be better if we didn’t slap that on every behavior that can be explained away by simple rudeness. He’s definitely being an ass and that’s enough of an issue without bringing a whole other, more dangerous, layer into it.
The good intentions are that he wants people to eat healthy food instead of unhealthy and thus hopefully be healthier.
“Healthy” as defined by him and only him. That’s still narcissistic.
Well, to be fair, processed foods have been defined as not healthy by a lot of health professionals, not him and only him.
But I’m in full agreement that he needs to stop what he’s doing and leave this alone.
Ok, but even the term “processed” doesn’t actually tell anything besides that the food went through some sort of process. Technically a package of sliced apples are “processed” because the slicing is a process. Having a widespread “processed foods are bad/unhealthy” attitude is out of touch.
Additionally there have been studies that show no real difference in overall health, lifespan, etc. between groups who ate only “whole” foods and those who ate a mixture of “whole” and “processed”.
Yeah but if Jane only eats one processed snack a day as part of an otherwise healthy diet, that’s fine. Everything in moderation, right? And Militant Vegan has no way of knowing Jane’s overall diet anyway, so he’s just being a self-righteous nag.
I would state it more strongly than that. It’s nobody else’s business how many “processed snacks” Jane eats OR whether those snacks are part of an “otherwise healthy” diet.
What someone else eats is nobody else’s business, PERIOD, FULL STOP, and Militant Vegan has 2 choicees: 1. mind his own damned beeswax, or 2) be shown the door!
Not actually true, because nobody can agree what “processed” even means. The newest designation of ultra processed foods categorizes a sliced carrot as processed. Which is both literally true and not what people think when they hear the word “processed”.
Can we stop calling every behavior we don’t like narcissism please? I’m so tired of hearing this word everywhere.
I agree with you when it just means someone who’s a bit selfish or demanding, but this is someone who thinks he’s king of what’s good for everyone.
Yes, in this case I believe the word ‘glassbowl’ is relevant.
I’d vote for “glassbowl”
I vote for rude and obnoxious
He doesn’t know what’s healthy for each individual person. This brings to mind a memoir by a woman with an eating disorder I read once—the woman was eating a bag of potato chips and someone told her off for eating so unhealthy… not knowing that was the only food she was going to eat that day. She threw out the chips. And remembered the comment for decades. Don’t comment on other people’s food choices.
I haven’t eaten in front of my coworkers in years – precisely BECAUSE someone told me off for eating a bag of crisps while fat.
Passed out 3 days later because I didn’t eat anything.
(Eating disorders never go away, we’re walking a razors edge most days sadly)
My amazing dance teacher joined social media to help keep her studio open during the pandemic, which is damn hard as an AFAB performer doing belly dance and burlesque before we get to the fact that she’s plus-sized and a fat activist.
Along with the nastier trolls, complete strangers who “mean well” tell her she needs to lose weight because of all the health conditions they imagine she has/might have in the future. Funny how this concern manifests in ways that exacerbate the *extremely deadly* health condition that she’s disclosed: anorexia.
Yeah, I hate eating in front of others as well. If I had to go back to the office, which I probably will because am looking for a new job, I’m not looking forward to dealing with office food police again. Over 40 with hypothyroidism.
I wish every particle of shame anyone has ever felt about just eating would be transferred immediately and irrevocably into the brains of everyone who has ever said anything unnecessary about other people’s eating habits. And then they couldn’t do anything with that shame except FEEL IT and HIDE IT until they stop commenting on people’s eating habits forever. The shame needs to be returned to where it belongs.
*Big hug* to you and all who may need it.
I still struggle with anorexic negative self-thoughts and I am not skinny anymore. I honestly think it never really goes away.
And frankly, even if he *was* right about what healthy is, for plenty of people, the occasional unhealthy snack doesn’t matter. A single bag of chips on a Friday or a couple sodas over the course of a week isn’t going to be make-or-break on your health.
And even if a coworker was eating something labeled HEART ATTACK BURGER or something and did so every day, it’s still none of his business! It’s just not.
If he had people behaving similarly towards him–and we’ve read plenty of letters at AAM about vegans having to eat bare lettuce or plain rice at company sponsored meals, and so on–it at least might make sense in a “I chose a terrible way to push back” kind of thing. It would still be a terrible idea but you could trace its evolution. But he’s apparently just decided that granola bars are the Devil.
I take two oranges and two nut/fruit granola bars to work every morning that I go in because it takes me 45 minutes to an hour to get to work and they weigh almost nothing in my backpack, which is already heavy enough.
If Fergus got in my face about them, I’d slowly take a bite of my granola bar and slowly chew while staring into his eyes. I might throw in an “Mmmm, honeeeeeyyyyy” if I felt sufficiently irritated, lol.
Oh my goodness I missed that he hates GRANOLA BARS. They’re sometimes the only thing I can eat! (I have multiple issues and I regularly get nauseous from my chronic illness. It sucks. It makes it hard to eat, and I don’t do well skipping meals (it’s a trigger for my chronic illness).)
In your shoes I’d probably do the same thing. Granola bars are not the devil. What in the world???
I mean some of them can have as much sugar as a candy bar (remember Kudos? Mmmmm Kudos….). But that still doesn’t mean he should comment on people eating them.
I am trying to change my diet to lose wet – not going on a diet, but actually completely change what I eat on a regular basis, permanently. I am not going to cut out everything I like, however unhealthy, because then I won’t stick with what I’m doing. I intend to cut down, but still enjoy, the crisps and other unhealthy things. Because I want the change to be permanent long-term and why on earth would I want to be unable to ever again eat trashy things where having them occasionally is just fine?!
Yes, Sharpie, exactly. That’s a lifestyle change and actually sustainable. Me too!
This is the way.
I have a carton of either Coke Zero or Pepsi Max under my desk at work because it’s cheaper to buy it that way. I drink precisely one a day. The next person who comments on my “addiction” is getting yeeted through a window.
Either that or an extended lecture about the pros and cons of diet soft drinks, which I have done a fair amount of reading on, so while I am hardly an expert, I am confident that I probably know any “risks” better than they do. I’m also comfortable that I’ve made an informed decision to have a can of something tasty with my lunch
my gran (who was in her late 80s at the time) was told off by her GP for eating the odd biscuit or pudding. she was maybe a little bit overweight – probably a UK 16/ US 12. she stopped eating anything she thought they would think was unhealthy and lost way too much weight. sometimes they just don’t think. also she was in her 80s. let her have a biscuit.
Yep. I feel that way about my dad. Let him have dessert. He’s got a limited number left.
that’s extra bananas pants because we know that actually having a little extra weight in older adults is a PROTECTIVE factor. getting ill or injured at an older edge often includes weight loss – having a few extra pounds helps in being able to weather and recover from it.
I want to shriek every time someone is like “Okay, first glance at these numbers fat looks protective. But what if we took all the unhealthy people out of the skinny group because it must be illness making them thin, and left them in the fat group?! Then the skinny group with no unhealthy people in it would be healthier!”
Yes, if I take all the green M&Ms out of the bowl on my left, and leave them in the bowl on my right, then the bowl on the right will have more green M&Ms. Because I adjusted the sample to show that.
As a teenager I sometimes volunteered in a nursing home nearby. One time, I was passing out cookies to some of the residents. A nurse came over, and spoke to one of the older ladies I had just handed a small plate with a cookie.
“Now Miss Holly, you know you need to be watching your sugar. Toss that cookie in the trash for me, please.” She stood there until Miss Holly did.
After the nurse left, Miss Holly turned to me and said, “I turned 100 last month. At my time of life, I’ll eat as many cookies as I damn well please. Give me another. Hell, give me two!”
I may not know a lot, but even I knew there was only one right answer. “Yes ma’am. I hope you enjoy them!”
<3
I love Miss Holly.
I love Miss Holly, too.
Also, I hate that nurse!
If I was Miss Holly, I would not have been able to stop myself from telling off that nurse.
I would have stuffed it in my mouth and blew a crumb loaded raspberry at her.
Love her!!
My grandmother, who will be 97 soon, was on medicine for years that meant she couldn’t drink alcohol. Now she’s off the meds because she’s so old, the docs figure she should do what she likes and the meds won’t extend her life much longer anyway. So greyhounds and wine coolers are back on the menu!
This is such an important point. I have a medical condition where part of the treatment is eating lots of salt. Other foods they tell you to avoid if you have high blood pressure are also good for me. If anyone ever tries telling me I’m unhealthy for eating these doctor-recommended foods, they’re going to get a very snarky response.
Me too! Turns out high blood pressure is bad, *but so is low blood pressure*. I also had a coworker who took salt pills to keep from randomly passing out. Just because it’s not what most people are dealing with doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem.
I’ll give you some of my sensitivity to salt, and we can both be happy! (thinking sympathetic thoughts about the salt monster on Old Star Trek).
Me too! (And I have gotten the “omg that’s so unhealthy” comments too. Ugh.)
I finally get it through people’s heads when I say 3 different doctors told me to do it. As a shitty bonus I am allergic to a bunch of random foods so even salty vegan food would be a no-go due to my deathly nut allergy. But food that raises my BP? Good.
Yeah, like wholegrain bread is good for most people, but for me it’s a gluten intolerant nightmare. Prepackaged snacks are brilliant when you have intolerances. Vegan food is a particularly bad match for me, and things like nut allergies.
My sympathies, I have Crohn’s so anything whole grain or full of nuts/seeds is fully on my no list too in case it causes a bowel obstruction, as are most fruit & vegetables unless they’re well cooked & peeled, so yeah, processed stuff is usually the best option for me! Like PLEASE remove all the fibre & things that are ostensibly “good”, I will die if you don’t! (I also have a soy allergy, so even before the Crohn’s I was never going to be a vegan, but now when people suggest it to me as a weight loss tactic I just start hysterically cackling, like my guy what would I EAT)
Yeah, I love seeded breads and raw veggies, but I have IBS and had part of my colon removed so high fiber foods can be problematic for me.
Aaaaaa this is so incredibly validating for me to read, you have no idea, thank you so much. I have WEIRD GI issues (ADHD related??) and I *know* white bread is better for me than wholegrain. There is NO such thing as food advice that works for everyone in the world.
He doesn’t know what’s healthy for each individual person
True. But that has nothing to do with his intentions, which is what is being argued about.
But it does highlight the fact that his intentions *do not matter*. And, for that matter, neither does his expertise or lack thereof.
As Alison says, as long as he is not THEIR dietician / nutritionist / medical provider he needs to stay out of what everyone else is eating. Period.
I think that he’s not a monster. But he *still* needs to shut up.
I don’t think he’s a monster, either — I think he’s a self-righteous yammering boor who needs to STFU.
I was afflicted with a few of those at work over the years, and were they a tedious bunch! And then there was the one lovely lady who had an assortment of health issues and who had to tiptoe through a menu as through a minefield, because the results of a mis-step could be be very much the same. She would sit and wordlessly stare with an expression of puzzlement at the loudmouthed food proselytizers. “I wish I could eat what they’re refusing,” she said quietly one afternoon.
Yeah I have a friend with an endocrine disorder that means she’s a salt waster. Not only is it healthy for her to literally eat 4 tablespoons of salt by itself, it is occasionally medically necessary for her to do so. To a random onlooker doing that would seem “unhealthy” (or even just gross) but it’s a realllllllly good example of the whole “healthy means different things per person”.
My comment got cut off a bit. I meant to add a part saying that he’s overstepping and not correct.
I don’t see good intentions at all. I see someone who thinks they know better than everyone else what is best for them. I see someone who has an extreme diet (vegan) that can – and absolutely has – hurt people. (I personally know people who damaged their health when going vegan and had to go back to eating animal products in order to function, so don’t come at me with your “I’m vegan and I’m blah blah blah” stuff. It’s NOT for everyone, even if you’ve personally managed to avoid deficiencies so far!) I see someone trying to impose their dietary restrictions on everyone else. I see a know-it-all without boundaries. I see someone who needs to stop it with the attempts to control others.
I tried to go vegetarian, much less vegan. I tried supplements. I tried everything and was still severely deficient in a bunch of things.
Went back to eating meat (albeit less meat) and I feel a ton better.
Yeah I struggle with all sorts of weird deficiencies even with a well-balanced diet. Supplements help but it’s always a little off.
My mom has a similar issues but has a restricted diet (both her history of ED/medication/etc.). Supplements don’t do enough to budge the numbers for her. Look I’m happy if she eats a cookie as long as she’s actually eating! Sometimes it’s just making sure they’re bringing in enough calories.
You’re not the only one; I’ve heard that from several people I know.
Their intention is publicizing their control issues.
This.
I’ve known multiple people who were under doctors orders to eat MORE salt and fat. I’ve also known someone whose orthorexia went undiagnosed for years because on the surface, they just looked like an athlete trying to eat healthy and stay in shape, and nobody realized it was to the point of an eating disorder.
“Eating Healthy” isn’t the same for everyone.
I had an athletic classmate who was told by her doctor to eat at least a stick of butter a day. She was an amazing cross-country skier, but her metabolism was so high she struggled to keep any weight on.
I had to eat a small bag of white chocolate a day for a while to keep weight on, under doctors orders. It was surprisingly brutal.
This happened to one of my friends too. Skating is rife with eating disorders.
Like ballet, it’s such a strenuous activity and they do it for hours every day so their need for sustenance is intense, but their figures are so closely scrutinized and they’re required to be slender so the drive to be thin is so intense —
^^ Those are not good intentions.
I’ve had people get on my case about eating junk food when I was having a hypo and fast food was the only thing open within walking distance. Because I should eat HEALTHY!!!1! Personally, I’d prefer not to die in the meantime.
This, absolutely this. We need energy to live and that’s all calories are. With comments like this I always feel doubly motivated to eat what I meant to eat, because I will need the energy to deal with that bullshit attitude on top of everything else.
The same “good intentions” people have when they bully fat people because they’re “concerned about your health”
But, oddly, the same people don’t have enough concern to, say, give that person a lift to work when their car is in the shop. Nope, their “concern” starts and stops at ordering them around.
Yeah, all “good intentions” means is “he doesn’t think he’s being an asshole” but most assholes don’t think they’re being assholes.
That was the LW who said they had good intentions, I’d assume they know the vegan better than we do
If he were giving his religious views because he believed that he was saving his co-workers souls would we give the same grace that he has “good intentions”. He is violating people’s personal and professional boundaries, his “intentions” do not matter.
Exactly. People get hung up on it because of the health belief, but ultimately veganism is a religion. There is nothing at all wrong with that, but just as it would be inappropriate for me to insist that my coworkers sacrifice something for Lent, it is inappropriate for this person to force their religious beliefs on colleagues.
I think this is just social lubricant language. OP wants this person to Stop. and sometimes the way you get people to do what you want, you flatter a little. If the OP were to say “you’re a judgemental narcissist and no one cares what you think” it might momentarily feel nice, but would be unlikely to result in real change.
I was thinking “self-righteous ass,” but same idea.
Also even if he does, we all know where good intentions lead.
There’s this saying about how the road to Hell was paved….
The reality is that this makes the situation worse. Someone nerding out about food is obnoxious, but they’ll get the hint that you’re not interested eventually. In contrast, someone who views it as a moral obligation to change people’s eating habits is going to be far more pushy and obnoxious about the whole thing. Not sharing a particular interest is normal; not complying with moral imperatives is treated as a sin, which means this person isn’t going to follow normal social norms. That’s where managers need to step in.
Exactly. These are “I’m Better” intentions, which depend on making others feel defensive and bad.
I think we can read this to mean that he’s not overtly intending to harm, shame, or be a jerk. VeganBoy probably hasn’t properly thought through what he’s really trying to do here and probably couldn’t articulate it beyond “but I’m right.”
They act like typical vegans, who are almost worse that bible thumpers. Leave us and our food alone!! I will never be vegan (and nevermind they have some of the MOST processed foods ever created) or vegetarian, and I will eat what I choose when I choose, and everyone else can just mind their own business unless you want a recipe or something.
This is unfair. There are tons of vegans who don’t proselytize, and as a result you probably don’t even register them. And being “more moral than thou” is absolutely not limited to vegans or vegetarians, it’s just the province of rude people who exist in every category. (I am neither vegan nor vegetarian, for the record).
This is not how vegans typically act. We hate it too. Please don’t paint us all with the same brush thanks to a few very vocal people.
Yup, I have a colleague who is a vegan. He was the one who shut it down when another colleague was asking me (not judgementally, just out of interest) about my restricted diet (I have some kind of sensory issues with food), pointing out that people don’t always like being questioned about what they are eating.
Being judgemental about eating isn’t a vegan thing. It’s just a…judgemental person thing.
This. All of the this. Judgy Judgertons gonna judge.
I’m sorry you’ve had negative experiences with vegans you know, but this doesn’t match my experience at all. The vegan people I’ve worked with have been very understanding that what people eat is a personal choice and not other peoples’ business. I think you’ve come across some rude people who are giving vegans a bad name.
Sorry, where are the good intentions here, exactly?
That’s the wrong question. And while it can be an interesting discussion here on the comments section, I hope the LW doesn’t go down this rabbit hole. Because it’s actually to their benefit to believe in the good intentions here.
The key is that he *needs* to stop. Even if his intentions are as pure as the driven snow AND he actually knows about nutrition (which he actually clearly doesn’t), he would STILL need to stop. And that is what the LW needs to focus on.
When (not if – we KNOW he’s going to tell the LW that he’s “just trying to help people”) he argues that he’s trying to help people, the LW is not going to get sidetracked by that. Instead they can say “Yes, you mean well. But you *still* need to stop.” “No, it does NOT matter that you mean well. You *still* need to stop.” and “No, we are absolutely not going to discuss your intentions or the science. You just need to stop.”
As the LW put it – he’s overstepping, and that needs to stop.
That’s a very good point. It’s unfortunate that’s it’s so easy to get drawn into this, but yeah, sticking with the overstepping itself is going be more productive.
I actually don’t see what good it’s doing for her to assume good intentions when he’s behaving this way, especially because doing that has already clouded her judgment and may still make her hesitate to speak and/or soften her message when she does speak up.
He sounds like the type who is focused on making everyone do what he says. That’s his real goal, not improving health.
He’s channeled this need into something that might be healthy for some people, so it’s not as bad as – for example – doing this with politics, but it’s still bad.
We assume good intent because that keeps us from being the one to fly off the handle.
If you’re already providing “healthy” options such as nuts and fruit, it sounds like you’re doing a great job! Adults can make their own choices.
Honestly, yeah. Maybe the fizzy drinks could include seltzer and not just pops, but it’s not like a 160 calorie bag of pretzels once a day are going to throw someone completely off their nutrition path.
I guess this depends on where you live, because to me ‘fizzy drinks’ would mostly mean Perrier. I live in a place where carbonated water is very popular, and we’d say ‘fizzy drinks’ to specify that it wasn’t only soda or pop.
Whereas here in the UK, ‘fizzy drinks’ means things like Coke, lemonade (as in clear fizzy lemonade, not the American sort that’s lemon juice and sugar mixed with water), Fanta, etc etc. Fizzy pop, in other words. If we mean sparkling water, we say sparkling water or fizzy water or soda water. It’s common here to put ‘fizzy drinks’ in the same category as ‘processed food’ or ‘junk food’, because they’re understood to be the sort of drinks that are full of sugar or sweeteners and that aren’t particularly good for you.
I agree with Alison though that this is Pushy Vegan’s problem, and while yes he can suggest things the company could provide in addition to all the snacks that are currently available, he can’t try to make the company stop providing anything he personally deems ‘unhealthy’. People are entitled to have options! And if he’s not careful, it’s going to turn into a ‘this is why we can’t have nice things’ situation, where the arguments over the snacks eventually lead to a ‘right, OK then, we won’t provide snacks if it’s going to cause drama’ decision.
Well, there’s also the whole category, that’s increasingly popular right now in the US, of fizzy flavored waters (flavored with fruit, but unsweetened). These are different than soda.
A vegan can eat fruits and nuts (barring the fig controversy), so this guy is just being cantankerous and bossy.
Please tell me about the fig controversy.
I’m guessing because figs are pollinated by a tiny fly that dies inside the bud after it does its duty? So each fig absorbs the fly’s body and thus contains animal protein?
I’m not vegan, but that’s enough to put me off figs (I never ate them in the first place).
Note:
1) Not all figs are pollinated this way. The seedless figs found in grocery stores/farmer’s markets are self-pollinating and do not involve wasps at all.
2) If you eat a fig that has seeds, you aren’t actually eating any of the itty bitty wasps; any crunch is from the seeds. As goddessoftransitory said, the fig completely dissolves/absorbs the tiny wasps.
3) You can feel how you wish to about eating a flower (figs are actually flowers, not fruits) that has absorbed insects, but it isn’t like a venus flytrap situation; the fig wasp is entirely dependent on figs and the fig is entirely dependent on fig wasps for their lifecycles.
Thank you!
Thank you for the voice of reason.
It’s about wasps that lay eggs in the figs. Some die in the fig, get broken down by its enzyme, and… are you eating a wasp or not?
Climate change? Nah wasps in figs.
AI taking our jobs? Nah, wasps.
Rising tide of authoritarianism? Nah, honey and figs.
It’s possible to care about both.
Not to be confused with the “fig fight” I witnessed (look for the AAM “the fraudulent bread pudding, the fig fight, and other food stories from work”)
“The Fart Wars have begun.”
* laying on desk, laughing hysterically *
https://www.askamanager.org/2023/11/the-fraudulent-bread-pudding-the-fig-fight-and-other-food-stories-from-work.html
Some fig plants require a wasp to pollinate them, and the fig wasp lifecycle ends with the female wasp, with pollen on her, crawling into the proto-fruit, laying eggs, then dying there, the corpse of which is then absorbed by the fruit. The cultivated figs do not require fig wasps to fruit the same as wild ones do, but generally are still pollinated by the little wasps. So from a vegan perspective, can you eat the fruit, knowing there could be residual animal in there, even if it wasn’t purposefully killed for human consumption?
I’d completely forgotten about how figs are made until just now. :-/
I just paused midway through eating a fig, stared at my screen in open-mouthed surprise for a few seconds… and then ate the fig. Delicious.
And yeah, every vegan I know eats honey, because all the alternatives are worse for the environment.
Still loving my Fig Newtons.
That gave me an ick for a minute, but then I remembered there’s a non-zero limit on how many bug parts can be in other foods, and figured I probably can just not think about the fig thing the way I don’t think about those foods.
I recall this with vegetarians in some group–with traditional storage they were getting some bug parts in their grains and beans, which took care of the B vitamins. Get rid of the bugs and people started having deficiencies.
Some people buy something called Blue Green Manna which is processed algae. If you lived where the algae was harvested, you would probably figure out that half the high protein content is from tiny green midges locally referred to as ‘flying algae’. (they all die in October with the first frost, but so does the algae…).
You’re not eating a bug part, though; it’s completely absorbed by the fig. It no longer exists except maybe at the atomic level. Like how eating grass-fed beef does not mean you’re eating actual grass.
I’d say definitely at the atomic level unless they ate composed of plutonium with a particularly fast half life. in that case you just have a tiny bit of lead piisioning
I mean, figs are generally considered kosher but they do need to be checked for random not-absorbed wasp bits, because then it wouldn’t be, so…ya know, not a frequent thing, but also not a guarantee of no wasp.
Agreed. It doesn’t sound like there’s a lack of options, including vegan ones. He needs to be told to leave people alone about their food choices. I used to work somewhere that had snacks and it was really nice to grab a granola bar or bag of chips or have more than coffee as a drink option. He is welcome to not partake what he doesn’t want to eat. Is there an employee handbook with anything in it about harassment?
The fact that he’s brought it up not only to LW, but their employee AND to the Health and Safety committee is feeling like the “weird hill to die on” conversation from a day or two ago. I wonder what everyone else told him.
he’s brought it up not only to LW, but their employee AND to the Health and Safety committee is feeling like the “weird hill to die on” conversation from a day or two ago
I had to laugh at that. And I agree.
I was really happy that Alison mentioned how fraught food issues can be, because some “healthy foods” can be anything but.
A celiac is going to have different healthy food preferences than someone who gets kidney stones or diabetes or has a nut allergy.
Yeah, I don’t even understand the complaint. there ARE healthy options in there!
as a proud Taco Bell / Thin Mint/ Donut/ Falafel Vegan, please (readers) do not conflate this man with all vegans. some people are just obsessed with food (or are suffering symptoms of orthorexia) and go “vegan” for cover on their food obsessions.
Wish it weren’t necessary to state, but yup! I am not vegan (or even fully vegetarian…living in a house with four people with four very different dietary needs and preferences makes it extremely tricky to be strict about anything that’s not an actual allergy) but I consider myself an aspiring one…and my actual vegan friends are both excellent at encouraging this and also not at all pushy.
Most vegans (and actual dietitians!) understand that the best way to encourage (what they see as positive) change is to be non-judgmental and honor that everyone’s relationship to food is different. This guy is failing on basically all fronts. And he sounds like a glassbowl, because absolutely no one is looking for his help in this setting.
That last sentence says it ALL. No one asked for this “help,” my dude.
We have the same taste in vegan food. There’s tons of processed vegan food. He’s on some entirely different high horse.
I am not vegan, but vegan donuts are superior donuts.
The Mighty O Doughut company where I live (Motto: “The Cleanest Hole in Town!”) is proof of this statement! Totally delish.
Have had them, can confirm. Dun-Well Doughnuts in Brooklyn is another incredible vegan donut mecca. I am not vegan and I love donuts.
I laughed very much at that motto – though when I went to look up the Mighty-O site to see if they shipped to my area, I didn’t see that among their other (often also amusing) items. (I did see an ad for the upcoming April Fools “poo” donut, so there’s that…) They do sound like an awesome outfit, even though they do NOT ship their donuts.
I WAS JUST LOOKING AT THAT :’D
I want a poo donut. I want to eat it in front of the OP’s coworker and say “Mmm organic!”
Fresh-cut French fries done in peanut oil like Five Guys does it are a wonderful, vegan snack that isn’t anywhere close to healthy! ;)
(I have no idea if FG’s food preparation methods mean their fries are vegan, I just know the ingredients are)
FG Tip: If you don’t want them to put all the extra fries in the bag, ask for your fries with no topper.
But why?
Gregg’s vegan sausage rolls! They are excellent!
Aww man, I miss living in the UK and eating those all the time. My circulatory system probably doesn’t, though.
Yesss Greggs, I love them.
Y’all are making me hungry, lol.
Vegan donut place near me makes bland as heck, greasy donuts. I would happily accept a good vegan donut. I’m an omnivore, but, I tell you what, my vegan scones and vegan shepherds pie taste way better than any conventional version I’ve tried.
Sadly, veganism doesn’t guarantee someone knows how to cook.
Ooh on Saturday perhaps you can share the vegan scone recipe. My closest coffee shop also happens to do vegan baked goods, and while their doughnuts, cookies, and “pop tarts” are amazing, their scones are…fine.
Yes, absolutely. I don’t have it here at work (though I *almost* have it memorized), but I will post it on the weekend open thread. The scones are tender and flavorful. You can dump almost anything in them, from chips to nuts to dried fruits, but I quite often make them plain. Add some tangerine marmalade from Davidson of Dundee (Florida, not Scotland) and they’re scrumptious.
Yep. As a vegetarian, I just want to make sure there are snacks I can eat and enjoy. I have no desire to play Food Police.
Exactly! Alison’s right that it’s always valid to request that the procurer add a snack, but overstepping to try to remove snacks.
Yes, excellent point. Potato chips and freezer pops are vegan too.
My favorite vegan food: Oreos!
Yeah, vegetarian/vegan diets are as healthy as you make them? Cutting back on red meat is usually good, but not if you replace it with potato chips and oreos.
It’s also pretty bad if you stack restrictive diets; I spent a lot of time trying to talk a vegetarian picky-eater ex out of going on a particular low-carb fad diet. I’m pretty sure all that was left for him to eat was eggs and avocado, which does not a balanced diet make.
As are most variations of Oreo (name brand). Yup, so much crap in them that those of us with allergies to milk and/or eggs are fine eating them!!
100%! Restrictive diets and orthorexia symptoms are often applauded as signs of superior health or willpower. Praising these behaviors can be incredibly harmful.
I think people with orthorexia/food police tendencies are coming not from a place of strength, but of insecurity.
Absolutely. Among all else that they are, eating disorders are houses of straw, that need constant shoring up to exist. Really restrictive diet followers tend to verbally reinforce themselves through policing others.
Perfectly sums it up imo.
Those on restrictive diets are often the ones most applauding their own superiority, as we see in this letter.
I get that “not all vegans are like this”, it’s true, but it’s also true that there is a very tiresome vegan (and vegetarian) Food Police. The Venn diagram has significant overlap.
I reserve a special eye-roll for demonizing “processed” food; it’s a meaningless term. When asked to define it most people cannot do so without resorting to using the very word “processed”.
If you can’t define a term without using the term in the definition, you aren’t making a point, you’re repeating jargon.
Disagree ‘ultra processed’ is a meaningless term & there is quite a bit of research around it if you are actually interested :)
When I learned you need to make your own hummus I started to tune out. I don’t live that life.
Ok, perhaps you will be the first—please define “processed” without using the term “processed”.
I agree that “ultra processed” is not as well-defined as I would like, but here’s a definition based on the Nation Libary of Medicine’s article “Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them” on the NOVA food groups:
Formulations of food substances broken down or modified by a series of chemical operations and then assembled into ready-to-consume hyper-palatable food and drink products. These food substances are never or rarely used in kitchens (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated or interesterified oils, and hydrolysed proteins), or classes of additives designed to make the final product palatable or more appealing (such as flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners, and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents).
Personally I don’t find “industrial-scale cooking is different to small-scale cooking in a kitchen” to be compelling evidence.
How about “this ingredients that go into a dish and the cooking techniques applied to them affect how healthy the dish is, and these new ingredients and techniques aren’t looking so good for us”?
Unfortunately by that definition, baby formula is considered “ultra processed”. Should we ban baby formula?
There are tons of healthy and/or important foods that fit the “ultra processed” definition, and I certainly wouldn’t want to ban them. For one thing, food waste would skyrocket if you banned preservatives, and there are a LOT of us who don’t have the time/energy/budget/facilities to cook from scratch. I’m just giving the definition I found when I did a deep-dive research into what on earth “ultra-processed” meant when it started popping up.
Fun fact: the processed foods database developed by Mass General Brigham (https://www.truefood.tech) is FUBAR. It lists Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream as both 0% and 72% ultra-processed, depending on the container size. I reported this to them over a year ago and they never responded.
IME, it’s not just vegetarians – see also people who are caught up in keto/low-carb or paleo or raw or anti-wheat (without the medical reasons why) or intermittent fasting, or high-protein with the MLM powders to sell you or low-fat (from back in the days).
The food police wear many many cloaks, but to a person, they presume not only that they know best … for everyone, but they should have power to control what other people do, and if they can’t control it, that they’re entitled to proselytize, lecture, coach and openly and loudly judge people who don’t conform to their standards.
Yeah, and people who have lost weight intentionally via any sort of diet, who then do the ‘OMG do you KNOW how many calories are in that???!!!’ thing.
Hah!
How did I miss the
“Calorie Counters” and
“Calories In / Calories Out, Calories In / Calories Out”
(they always repeat themselves when someone explains human bodies aren’t that simple)
people in my list!?
Exactly. There’s nothing wrong with intentionally losing weight because your doctor tells you that you have health problems brought on by eating foods that are high in cholesterol, sugar, and other substances that can lead to weight gain. There’s also nothing wrong with being proud of yourself for successfully losing weight (and also having your cholesterol and blood sugar levels be at a healthier level) because of your diet. There’s EVERYTHING wrong with insisting that everyone must follow the same diet that you do.
The Seattle Times had a great article on this recently. Link in reply:
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/wellness/are-ultra-processed-foods-the-dietary-demons-theyre-made-out-to-be/
The author, Carrie Dennet, has lots of very good writing on this topic and food in general.
Thanks for the link.
Honestly, I don’t think vegans are more annoying than any other people about food. There are plenty of obnoxious omnivores who won’t let other people eat what they want in peace. I think the difference is they stand out more, because instead of thinking “There’s Hortensia being bossy again” it becomes “Hortensia’s a vegan and is a pain about it.” Hortensia was a pain before becoming vegan.
Good point, especially your last sentence. No bet that this guy is bothersome in other ways as well.
This is a good point. I worked with someone who took up body sculpting and made some big changes to her diet along with it. She then started being obnoxiously judgemental about whatever everyone else ate, but even before that she was the ‘brutally honest’, stomps all over other people’s feelings, everyone’s business is my business type. The food thing was just another area to behave like that in.
It stands out more because it’s a stereotype, and people love nothing so much as someone who confirms their stereotype.
+1 to processed being meaningless at this point. It’s like saying something is “all natural.”
Elemental arsenic is all-natural.
So is strychnine.
I see way more obnoxious, insulting stuff from omnivores toward vegetarians & vegans than I do the reverse.
Hard agree. My steps down the road towards disordered eating and orthorexia began after close encounters with a very well-known Food Police.
Those Lenny and Larry cookies are amazing.
Yup, it’s not actually about him being vegan, it’s about him being “health” obsessed and rude
Right? My husband and I eat mostly vegan. His version is very different than mine. I’m happy most Oreos are vegan and he’s thinking of how many dishes he can stick lentils in. Vegan doesn’t equal healthy and it’s arrogant and presumptuous of the coworker to believe his way is best and try to push that on coworkers.
Yeah, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard “can you have that?” because I’ve been seen eating a burrito with chips & salsa instead of a grass clippings & quinoa bowl with probiotic sauce or whatever else people think we eat.
In law school I was friends with a Twizzlers and Mountain Dew vegan. She was a fun friend.
Sadly, it is all too common. And by proudly asserting that you’re vegan, you’re contributing to the truth that “vegans gotta constantly tell you about their diet”
It’s not like it’s irrelevant to the discussion.
Cheerwine is fizzy AND vegan!
I have several vegan friends and acquaintances who don’t lecture, preach, or otherwise judge my food at me.
If this dude really meant well, he could have simply said, “could we add fresh fruit/veg?” or suggest other options from wherever the snacks are being purchased. Wanting to dictate how everyone is eating seems like obsessive behavior to me.
Exactly. If there were no vegan options, or only like, one sad banana, that’s a reasonable ask if the company is providing snacks. To declare that granola bars are worse than Hitler is quite something else.
I was thinking about this too. Is he assuming that anything vegan is automatically “healthy*”? Because Oreos are healthy, and as you said, my beloved T Bell has vegan options- my twenties were filled with TBell runs with my best friend (vegan) and our cupboards always had like 4 different flavor oreos. Are my impossible nugs that I basically live on healthy, to this guy?
*Healthy food vs not healthy food=not a concept supported by reality
Orthorexia? New vocabulary word for the day, thank you!
Heck, I worked with a vegan colleague who would go buy french fries for lunch if he forgot to bring lunch to work. And he explicitely told me “french fries are vegan”. Since then, I’ve separated “vegan” from “healthy” in my mind and often bring up that example the minute I get a whiff of “oh a vegan diet is so much healthier!”.
It’s a bit like people assuming that gluten-fre = no bread or pasta, so ‘very healthy’. There are sooo many varieties of gluten-free bread and pasta.
Exactly! I’ve been vegan for more than 10 years and I’ve also recovered from an eating disorder. I find it extremely frustrating when people try to promote things that actively hurt me as someone with a history of disordered eating under the guise of veganism. Both because it’s just infuriating in general, and because it furthers the assumption that veganism is entirely about food and dieting and health rather than being a broader ethical position that influences many aspects of my life.
I would be super uncomfortable if someone at work was trying to control what foods were available for everyone to consume like this.
Hah! I’m also a Taco Bell/Thin Mint/Falafel vegetarian. I don’t want to eat meat, but trust that doesn’t lead to me making good choices!
Hahaha my vegetarian diet in college was plain pizza, fries, cookies, sugary cereal, soda and alcohol. Not eating meat doesn’t necessarily equal healthy! (Tasty, yes. Edible/drinkable by a 19-year-old without waking up feeling like death? Sure. Could I pull that off at 50? Oh hell no.)
Oreos are vegan! This is my favorite vegan fact.
Thank you so much for shutting this guy down. I have had too many coworkers (the first was already two too many) who eagerly and repeatedly provided copious nutritional advice, weight loss lectures, and other instructions I never asked for, and too few supervisors who were at all inclined to get these colleagues off my case.
Also, I have literally never seen someone offer this type of advice to a man.
I’m a man, and I’ve gotten this advice a number of times. I tend to keep pretzels around to munch on, and I’ve gotten no shortage of comments about how it’s bad for me. On the plus side, the folks who want to say that gluten isn’t fit for human consumption tend to shut up twenty minutes into my “Here’s the actual historical, archaeological, and paleontological evidence, I’ve done the research” lecture. And I’m fully aware that Mountain Dew isn’t a health food, I don’t need to be told….
Shut them down with elaborate explanations is certainly a worthwhile approach.
And in my opinion Mountain Dew and similar stuff counts towards health too, in that case mental health, because a little treat now and again makes me happy.
Then you should read the link to the dietician letter from years past.
Yes, there are ways that discussion around food and weight gets gendered and women take more of the brunt of it, but there are men with eating disorders and body image issues, and I can pretty well guarantee that there are men who have been given plenty of unsolicited advice on their diets. I at least see “eat a salad” sneers or diabetic jokes (ablism, misinformation, AND fatphobia in one lovely package!) directed at men, too.
Heck, one of the ugliest discussions around Trump is how often he is mocked for his weight and his love of hamburgers. Those are literally some of his LEAST objectionable traits (his narcissism, fascism, racism, sexism, ablism, trolling, abuse, lying, disdain for anyone not wealthy, indifference to the suffering of others, theft, misuse of government funds, misuse of government in general, scorn for the legal system, and disinterest in facts are all much much worse).
I mostly keep the mocking limited to providing McDonald’s for a White House meal for sports teams.
There is a pace for McDonald’s and it is not hours after it was made, or in a formal setting.
Those photos of the piles of cold fast food hamburgers and fries from several burger/burrito franchises offered to professional athletes who presumably watch what they eat still gives me the willies. The super chef in the nearby kitchen could have offered delicious, hot hamburgers, fries and burritos/tacos to those athletes that would have blown those scrawny mystery meat burgers and whatever away. Besides, it just looked stupid in that formal dining room.
Yes, that was awful, but it was awful because it was disrespectful and inconsiderate towards the very people supposedly honoured, and also did not respect anything from tradition, catering procedures, dietary needs, edibility or food safety.
I heartily encourage his love of Micky D’s. Eat up, Donald! >:)
And sometimes you’ll hear a really telling statement: “Men don’t get judged on this—just look at all the unashamed fat slobby Doritos-eating neckbeards out there!” Which is judging fat men as a part of a claim that men don’t get judged.
This happened to a friend of mine just over 20 years ago, when he was in his mid 20s. He was on his lunch break, eating a Big Mac, when a co-worker began to lecture him on the nutritional evils thereof.
He didn’t say a word to her. He just took his second and third Big Macs out of his briefcase and continued eating.
He was certainly gifted metabolically. At the time he was 6’2, 175 pounds, and never exercised.
Over 20 years later, he’s 6’2, 175 pounds, and never exercises. Did I say friend? I meant mortal enemy! ;)
I’ve definitely seen it happen to men, though it tends to manifest somewhat differently. With men, one thing I see a lot of is attributing specific, unflattering political or cultural beliefs or moral character based on what the guy eats (from “soyboy,” to “salad is for rabbits,” to the specific set of stereotypes surrounding Cheetos and Mt Dew, to what it means to be a “meat and potatoes man”).
Nobody is exempt from weirdness around food.
“Nobody is exempt from weirdness around food.” Unfortunately true. It might not hit everyone the same way, but your examples show how deeply it is ingrained/overlooked.
Those are all good examples. Women still do take the brunt of food/weight abuse, but there are plenty of often subtler, but still present manifestations for men.
My ex was a very thin man and the amount of blatant bullying he got about this at work was horrifying. He mostly shrugged it off, but at his work events I was livid at the cruel “joking” comments about what he ate and looked like from some colleagues… and the unsolicited advice from others.
I’m a fairly thin woman and still get endless “I don’t know how you get away with eating that” stuff. I don’t have issues with food, but they don’t know that, and it doesn’t feel flattering.
People just need to stop making comments about other people’s bodies and food choices, generally.
I briefly dated a man with body image issues who wanted constant reassurance that it was okay he wasn’t bulked up and super muscular. Unfortunately, no amount of telling him I didn’t find body builders attractive and I actually enjoyed being with him helped with his insecurity.
The kicker? He was a marathon runner.
Then you need to get out more, this kind of talk absolutely affects men too. Every dude I know has heard some version of “bulking up” “chicken breast” “keto diet” “soy boy” “carnivore” “whey protein powder” conversation. It’s gendered differently but it’s just as toxic.
I’m vegan and I eat processed (vegan) foods all the time, I have a whole cupboard full of protein bars, etc, so I’m not certain the fact that he’s vegan is really relevant to this.
Same, I’ve got plenty of veggie crumbles and other protein substitutes in my fridge and freezer that are highly processed food. But the OP said he’s specifically against any processed food and he may be like my former roommates who were vegan and didn’t consider vegan food of any kind to be processed. Their definition of processed food was standard junk food. So hot dogs = processed food, vegan hot dogs = not processed food. I’ve met a lot of other veg’ns over the years who thought this way, though it was usually people who were new. I’ve also met a lot of vegans who believed vegans should not eat anything that is processed.
They may go back a long time, but things like tapioca, flour, tofu, are processed foods.
If you couldn’t pick or kill it, cook it and eat it, it’s a processed food.
Or he may not be anything like your former roommates.
As someone else said, his diet is a red herring here.
Same here. There’s a group of vegans and vegetarians that are against any processed foods that aren’t protein substitutes, and they tend to be vocal. What they eat is their business, but they tend to gatekeep “acceptable” food in a way that makes them disapprove of most people around them. In my experience, these are the veg’ns who annoy other people because they come across as misinformed and hypocritical.
It sounds like *he’s* made the fact that he’s vegan relevant to this.
Nah, the particulars of his diet are a red herring here. If he was really into keto or the Atkins diet or paleo or whatever else, it would be equally obnoxious and equally a problem.
I mean… he’s the one who brought it up, so.
You’re allowed to bring up your own diet without it being a political statement.
Has he, though?
Or are those two separate facts?
“My colleague is vegan” and “My colleague is a jerk about snack foods” aren’t related unless you decide to conflate them in your own head, unless he’s starting every diatribe with “As a vegan I think we should have healthier snacks in the workplace,” which it really doesn’t sound like he’s doing.
It’s just his particular flavor of annoying, agreed – it’s not about being vegan. In my experience the Paleo people are the most evangelistic (I guess the “carnivore diet” ppl now)… and we all remember Keto dieters in the workplace… there’s just no reality in which commenting on what a coworker is eating is okay. That is, and repeat after me now, you’re saying that something they brought looks good.
I’ve noticed “processed” becoming the new fad food type to avoid. We process most of our food before eating! Now, it’s a good idea to minimize the ultra-processed stuff like junk food because it’s calorie-rich, nutrient-deficient (which is, as far as I can tell, the real issue with ultra-processed foods) and prioritize normal and minimally processed foods. But that’s not what fad food types are about. Humans are omnivores and our default diet, for a normal lifestyle, should be “a bit of everything”. You can specialize a lot, but absent health conditions, you don’t /need/ to.
Side note: I use an app called OpenFood Facts at the grocery store. It scans barcodes and tells you facts about the products including a processing grade – but critically it follows the US system where C is “average” and you’ll notice very quickly that most things you’d consider healthy are Cs. You can also customize what product facts are highlighted, so if you want to prioritize allergens, vegetarian/vegan, etc, you have those options.
Exactly! EVERYTHING we eat, other than fresh fruit and those (relatively) few vegetables that are okay to eat raw, like carrots, lettuce, celery, etc., is processed. Simply cooking something makes it processed. Meat needs to be cooked in order for us to utilize the nutrients. We can utilize grains such as oats unless they are processed (steaming and rolling or steel cutting) then cooked.
I would argue even the iceberg lettuce I buy in a plastic bag, pre-cut to thin strips is processed? I eat it raw but the baggie says it was washed in ice water. Very naturally occurring right next to the lettuce chopper I am sure.
It’s chemical processing that’s the focus, not mechanical processing. If you took a bite out of a full head of unwashed lettuce, you’d get the same nutrition as from your pre-cut, pre-washed lettuce. Chemical processing includes cooking, fermenting, churning, and/or adding stabilizers and preservatives.
I find this interesting because whilst I *do* agree with the answer, ‘fizzy drinks and processed food should be available all the time, for free’ is a working environment that many people would find difficult. I don’t have a solution to that because I’m all down for treating people as adults who can make their own choices.
(Absolutely no disagreement with the fact he cannot be commenting on other people’s food choices – that’s not ok! But I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to struggle with having unhealthy food everywhere & even some of the people who eat it may welcome it being less available and something they have to opt into rather than opt out of).
That would be a reason to discuss the options with *everyone*, just not to change them to suit one person.
Yes, sure! But this wasn’t part of the answer right, the answer was ‘shut him down completely’ :)
I guess you missed this in her answer: If he brings up the office-provided snacks again, you should say, “If there are specific snacks that you would like us to add to what we’re providing, you can absolutely submit suggestions for them. I am open to making additional things available, but we’re not going to restrict what we provide based on one person’s preferences.”
Because the question wasn’t “what food should be available?” The question was “what do with do with this controlling, pushy vegan?”
The fact that he’s vegan is not really relevant.
Except that HE is making part of the debate at work.
If he’s making his vegan diet part of the argument, and he’s being pushy and controlling, it’s fair to call him the controlling pushy vegan.
You can think it’s irrelevant all you want, but you’re taking it personally when it’s not about you.
He’s literally not, though.
“My colleague is vegan” and “my colleague says that our snacks are unhealthy” are two completely unrelated statements, given an absence of evidence that they are related.
You’re the one who’s decided that he’s being pushy and controlling because he’s vegan, the letter never indicated that.
You are deciding that these are a cause and effect, actually. Also to be offended because you think it implies things about other vegans I suppose?
People are mentioning it because the guy is being a pain about food and a vegan. They aew also calling him a man, because he is, not because that makes him a pain about food.
I think they’re pretty explicitly conflating the two here, honestly.
They DO have to opt into partaking in the unhealthy snacks, though. No one is forcing them, and healthier options like fruits and nuts are also available.
No-one is *forcing* them no, but it’s unrealistic to suggest that the foods available to us have no impact on our diet. (Has there been a huge change in how much willpower people have in the last ~60 years – probably not, but there has been a big change in the type of food available..)
Sorry and the point is that for many people they are more likely to grab a soda if it’s free & visible from their desk than if they have to leave the office & specifically buy it. (I say this as someone who drinks too much soda – there’s no judgement intended!)
I think the issue is that no one person is responsible for the health of their coworkers. The only person you have to worry about is you. It is not the LW nor the vegan’s job any more than the people who work at the supermarket to make sure that the public health directives by WHO are met. Policing the snacks and what other people eat is flat-out rude and way out of line. If someone has a problem walking past the cookies, find another route, but it is not the vegan’s job to worry about that.
I should add I do not drink soda, but I do like/love cookies. I have zero issue if there are cookies – usually they are right outside my door – walking right by them.. It is on me to make the choices I want and not to decide what is healthy for anyone else.
But there is. you are judging it something I should not have free access to based on your ideas.
You seen to have two main points:
1. these unhealthy foods should be hidden to help people with actual disorders
2. not offering these items is better because having easy access to them allows people to make “bad” choices.
For the first point, there are much better solutions mentioned that assist a person with for example an eating disorder such as putting the snacks seemed “unhealthy” out of view. This person also has the option of asking for accommodations like wfh that don’t affect another person’s access.
For the second point – this is just wrong on its face. I like soda, so yeah, maybe I drank more at the one job I had that offered it free than the others. But I can also choose to skip dessert that night if I drink too much, or exercise more, or many other options, and all of them assume I even *need* to do anything about it. But it certainly isn’t my company’s problem, and it’s a bar overstep and entirely judgemental for them or anyone to say “you can’t be trusted to make your own health decisions, so we’re going to remove any food we deem unhealthy.” Because that’s a personal willpower or judgement issue that is way beyond a company’s snacks at lunch.
Your mistake is thinking any of these foods are bad or unhealthy. Your idea of what is acceptable to eat does not match mine. Your idea of hiding food and restricting it’s intake is literally how eating disorders are formed. Free soda is not a problem. You do not drink too much soda. You drink as much as you want.
I get where you’re coming from but the road on which ‘unhealthy snacks shouldn’t be within sight’ can lead to very bad places for those of us with eating disorders.
When people around me are eating stuff like sugar etc. with no judgement I feel a bit more comfortable eating! It feels welcoming.
If there’s a ‘you cannot have anything that’s not low calorie and low fat’ atmosphere around it’s really dangerous.
I’ve made no suggestions around limiting the food people can bring in or buy for themselves :)
But you are making a moral judgement on the food. It’s not a public health crisis for my employer to offer nuts, crisps, coffee and soft drinks.
I disagree it’s a moral judgement but I understand that eating is a very personal issue and would never want to make someone feel judged for what they are eating or not eating.
By designating a food as unhealthy vs healthy, you’re making a judgment. One that isn’t founded in reality or nutritional science.
There are healthy habits, yes. I do not live on impossible nuggets and ramen broth, because that would be detrimental to my health. However, a healthy diet can include both.
It’s about habits, not subjective judgments and sweeping generalizations. Your health and relationship with food is your responsibility- I recommend taking some.
Thanks @Elle.
would never want to make someone feel judged for what they are eating or not eating.
Then stop insisting that by merely having foods that you disapprove of in the office, the management is enabling unhealthy eating.
None of the foods that the LW describes are SO unhealthy the people should not be allowed to have easy access to them.
I don’t think it’s a moral judgement to say “my willpower sucks, please don’t tempt me with free junk food.”
But I also understand why people who like free junk food would push back against that.
“temptation” is moral language–in fact, Christian language. It implies that the presence of certain foods leads one to sin. It doesn’t just say “im more likely
to eat if I see my favorite snack.” That’s true whether you intend the moral/ religious meaning or not.
Calling it junk food is, so I think maybe your view on this is a bit off.
Is it okay to “tempt” you with good healthy food, but not bad junk food?
It turns out so much of the language we use around food is about which food is good or bad, whether you will resist temptation or give into the “sinful” indulgence and feel guilty afterwards… it’s our entire culture.
For people with disordered eating, learning to treat food as morally neutral is a huge step. Eating an apple and not a donut doesn’t make you a good person. Eating a cupcake doesn’t make you bad. If you eat a cupcake, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed and might as well binge because you’ve been depriving your body and soul of the food it needs for so long. If you have binged, that doesn’t mean that you need to double-down and punish your body by restricting harder.
So yeah, saying “don’t supply *bad* foods, only *good* foods” is still injecting moral judgement into food decisions even if you’re only meaning to judge yourself.
It’s not a moral judgement, it’s at least two packed into one statement.
I don’t think it’s a moral judgement to say “my willpower sucks, please don’t tempt me with free junk food.”
In addition to what the others have said, at least that’s an acknowledgement that you have an issue that you are asking others to deal with.
Mr. Healthy Vegan is *not* saying that. For one thing he is not asking – he is demanding. And he is not claiming that he is being harmed, but that he has the right to impose his idea of “healthy” on everyone else in the office.
Some people want to outsource their own self control and sense of accountability/responsibility- it’s not enough to forego snacks yourself. Apparently, they must be outlawed for all due to the few with a problem. Hate to assume a commenter’s location, but it’s a very American approach.
Hmm, I actually disagree with this being an American approach. Americans score WAY higher on the “Protestant Work Ethic” scale than most other countries, and a big part of that is taking personal responsibility for what are often systemic issues.
See, for example, our response to public health crises like smoking, maternal mortality, homelessness, drug addiction, vaccine hesitancy, COVID, etc. We tend to blame the individual for not “just saying no” (personal responsibility), or else deciding that personal liberty is more important than the societal costs of, for example, a measles outbreak.
Bingo
Eh, if he’s vegan, he likely can’t eat most of the items on offer anyway (ask me how I know), so it shouldn’t be much of an issue if he was minding his own business. This seems way less like an issue of personal temptation and way more like somebody who thinks they should have a say in everyone else’s diet.
And some of us love coffee, but shouldn’t be drinking multiple caffeinated coffees every day because because of health issues.
Are you suggesting that all work environments should not have coffee or other caffeinated beverages available because SOME people might be tempted to have one too many cups (for them) by having it around, seeing co-workers drinking it, smelling it as someone is walking by with a fresh cup?
Yup – the incredibly easy availability of delicious fatty, salty, sugary foods has definitely created an environment that makes it much, much harder for people to maintain a healthy diet. Together with more sedentary lifestyles, that’s a pretty dangerous cocktail. “Obesogenic environment” is the fancy term, I believe.
And yes, obesity is definitely a huge health crisis in almost all developed countries and no, it’s not the fault of the people living in those circumstances, and it’s definitely not a case of “oh, but you could just choose to eat less!”
It does sound like the LW is already on the right track there by at least also providing healthier options like nuts and fruit. Personally, I would indeed prefer more focus on stuff like that, non-sugary drinks, maybe even the famous fruit basket – but adding in a few granola bars or cookies doesn’t sound like a horrible selection either, honestly!
But then I’m also European and the idea of free soda at work does seem a tiny bit absurd to me…
i’m in london and we get free fizzy drinks at work (if we want them). most people take one at lunchtime maximum.
“Obesogenic environment” is a bullshit term, made up to pathologize bodies that are not (IMO) excessively thin. It’s a racket to sell more diets, exercise machines, weight loss pills and weight loss surgeries.
Are there problematic things in many processed foods? Yep! HFCS and partially hydrogenated oils have shown to have adverse effects.
Is anything “processed” automatically unhealthy? Nope. Some foods require “processing” to be edible. You don’t eat raw olives, after all (not toxic, but bitter.)
Different bodies have different nutritional needs.
My wife has cancer, and has lost a horrific amount of weight, to the point you can see her full ribcage and collarbone. She looks like a skeleton at 140 lbs. The “Ideal Weight” for women chart says that 140 lbs is what her ideal weight is at her height and frame. It is not, not for her or any other woman I know. The whole pathologization of being fat is obnoxious, and does more harm than good.
Best wishes to you and your wife. It’s really a special kind of hell dealing with diet talk and pressure around supposedly “unhealthy” food when dealing with ongoing, life-threatening health issues.
Fizzy drinks and processed foods are not the only things available for free, though. OP specifically mentions fruit and nuts. Fizzy drinks encompasses both sugary sodas and simple carbonated waters.
You are responsible for your own choices.
I don’t disagree that this would be difficult for some folks, but they are still adults who have their own agency. It sounds like this employee is the only one voicing opposition to the snacks, and not because he has a problem avoiding them but because he doesn’t think anyone else should be able to enjoy them.
This is where I fall as someone that would struggle with readily available snacks. It’s about agency. I get to choose the food. It’s not being chosen for me and it’s not anyone’s business why I chose it.
Let my health be between me and my doctor, not judgmental co-workers.
I have terrible willpower around unhealthy snacks. I try not to buy them at all, so I don’t over-indulge but if someone brings in donuts, I’m cooked.
But that is literally MY problem. I can’t be complaining that the stuff is there.
I think I disagree it’s (only) your problem, it’s a public health problem. (But I still don’t have a solution, lots of people will want and enjoy the snacks)
it’s a public health problem
Can we not? Different foods are “unhealthy” for different people depending on what is happening in their body. What is incredibly healthy for you could be incredibly harmful for someone else.
^ This!
Plus, unless this one LW’s workplace is able to magically remove transfats, PFAS and whatever particular food ingredient is on top of TODAY’s bugaboo list of “unhealthly” from all office kitchens and supermarkets and restaurants everywhere, it is not this LW’s job or this employer’s responsibility to be ground zero for “zero tolerance for unhealthy* food options”
* whatever that means, as @Jennifer Strange points out
If we’re talking about something like allergies, sure. But there are plenty of food items that are almost universally healthy or unhealthy.
Nobody has deep-fried donuts as part of a balanced diet, and leafy greens are only ever an issue if you have specific health complications.
These things are designed to exploit impulse buying, not to be part of a healthy diet.
Counterpoint: donuts are designed to be delicious
Yeah, I mean, they can definitely be a part of a healthy diet, just not the main part and probably also not in the same amounts as leafy greens or lentils!
Honestly, I do find it a bit absurd to pretend all foods are completely equal and there is nothing that’s inherently more or less healthy. That feels like an overcorrection to food shaming to me that doesn’t really help the discussion at all.
That that discussion doesn’t belong at work is of course a completely separate question!
Ummm, I’m sorry, but at base they are equal. They are food, with specific nutritional profiles. Each person has different nutritional needs through the course of the day and through the course of their life.
While some foods may be “healthy” (good) or “unhealthy” (bad) for you, those calculations will be different for someone else. Substituting healthy/unhealthy for good/bad does not remove the stench of moral judgement from it, and when it comes to other people, one should not apply moral judgements to what they chose to eat. Unless one is a registered dietician discussing food choices with a voluntary patient, those food judgements need to be kept to one’s self.
Yeah no, several of those “universally” healthy food, including your example of leafy greens don’t work and/or actively make worse health issues of people I know as well as some of my own. The few generalities that seem to hold up are:
1. don’t eat stuff you are allergic to
2. try to eat a variety of things
3. don’t eat moldy food that’s not supposed to be moldy
are only ever an issue if you have specific health complications.
My point exactly. Yes, it’s unlikely that anyone has a health complication that required them to eat deep-fried doughnuts (which isn’t even one of the snacks being offered here), but there are plenty of folks who have health complications that require them to avoid leafy greens (or at least recommend that they do). There is no way to get rid of any foods that might cause someone digestion/health issues without just getting rid of all food.
yep, I’m recovering from a digestive thing right now and on a low fiber diet for the next few days, which means i shouldn’t have leafy greens, or whole grain foods, which most people would say are healthy.
Right, similar point I was trying to make above (probably stuck in spam for now). Good luck with the adjusted diet. Hope you can be back to normal soon!
Leafy greens are a major source of food-born illness. Particularly when eaten raw, as many are. And some, like iceburg lettuce, have the nutritional value of cardboard, they’re just cellulose and water (which is why you shouldn’t feed iceburg lettuce to pets). There’s also how you cook them. Collard greens in the Deep South are probably not as nutritious as a spinach salad.
And deep-frying is, if done properly, a very healthy way to cook. The steam generated by the cooking meets the oil at the surface of the material and creates a barrier to entry for the oil. That’s why things fizz when you put them in the frier. The amount of oil on the food is minimal, can be removed relatively easily, and may not be bad for you anyway depending on the oil you used. It’s when the oil’s too hot (and the steam escapes before cooking is done) or too cold (and the steam pressure isn’t high enough), or the water content isn’t right, that oil starts penetrating the food and create problems. I will grant that every fast food place and most large doughnut shops are going to deep-fry wrong, but abuse does not negate use.
Plus, health is more complicated than you’re making it. Sure, a doughnut isn’t providing a lot of nutrients other than calories (which ARE a nutrient). But if I eat a generally healthy diet and this is a treat, that can be healthy. Or if I’m using the doughnut as a reward for some healthy activity (like, “I’ll stop for a doughnut after my five-mile run this morning” to get myself to run), on a balance it’s healthier.
Further, by categorizing foods as “healthy” and “unhealthy” we are making a moral judgment and those can create some really, really bad disorders when it comes to food and how we think about food. A doughnut isn’t unhealthy; it’s a treat. It fits a certain role (or not, if you don’t want to eat them). If you try to make it fit a different role, that action is unhealthy.
Doughnuts absolutely were not designed to exploit impulse buying either. The history is complicated, but what we can say for certain is that they were invented before “impulse buying” was a thing. I’ll grant that they have been modified quit a bit over the years (which is itself an interesting topic), and an argument can be made that doughnuts in their current form are optimized for attracting customers, but that’s a very different statement.
A deep-fried donut as an occasional treat can absolutely be part of a balanced diet. Once a month isn’t going to harm most people. (And, FWIW, my mom is one of those people whose doctor has strictly forbidden leafy greens, due to interactions with her medication.)
Well, it’s such a slippery slope. Yes, no one is ever going to say that deep-fried Twinkies are healthy. But eggs, for example, have been labeled both ways over the past few decades. (Personally I think eggs are an excellent healthy protein, and no, I am not going to suffer through eating only flavorless eggs whites. But you do you.) And juice is healthier than soda, but it still is full of naturally occurring sugars…..etc etc etc.
Counterpoint: I knew someone whose doctors specifically told her to eat more burgers and less salads, because she wasn’t getting enough fat in her diet and was having issues because of it. A couple of deep fried donuts would have probably *helped*.
I know someone who had a prescription for several large orders of McDonald’s fries a week. The person’s blood pressure was lower than some cadavers have, and that was the best way the doctor had to get it back to levels more typical for living people. I’m sure there are medications and whatnot that they could have given the patient, but “Eat a large order of fries three times a week” was a lot easier, less expensive, and something that the patient was likely to actually do.
Yeah, no sense in doing expensive medications when a simple, easy dietary fix like eating some fries will solve the problem!
Funnily I did look that up not too long ago. Turns out medicating it is actually fairly tricky and some of the meds that actually do work have some nasty side-effects. The preferred method therefore is truly diet-based whenever that works.
Nobody has deep-fried donuts as part of a balanced diet
Uh… yes, lots of people have donuts as *part* of their diet, and their diet as a whole is balanced and meets their nutritional needs. It would be particularly beneficial for those trying to increase their fat intake or raise their blood sugar, but even for people trying to lose weight it’s important not to be so restrictive that you give up the diet or feel deprived and binge.
The “balanced” part means you eat neither wholly donuts nor wholly lettuce – a balance which changes from person to person as to what is healthy.
To be fair, donuts and other fried foods have been around for decades, if not longer – way before “impulse buying” or drive-thrus were things. It’s totally fine to consume foods that aren’t 100% healthy.
Try centuries at least.
But there are plenty of food items that are almost universally healthy or unhealthy.
And none of the foods the LW mentions fall into the camp of “almost universally unhealthy”. Especially not in small amounts. Yes, even ~~gasp~~ cookies and fizzy drinks!
Sure, if that’s a large part of your diet, that’s going to be a problem. But that’s not what is going on here.
THANK YOU.
this is being unfair to TechWorker. Their point is correct: the way food is and is not available to people, along with the quality (or lack thereof) IS a public health problem and the office is a tiny microcosm of this. They have made *zero* suggestion that the office change the availability or variety of the snacks. We see the same thing in school/college cafeterias. What the effects are of a sharp increase in the availability of food, the reduction in nutritional quality of food, and the increase in sedentary work *does* have a public health impact. How to best handle that is a genuinely tricky thing, without any moral judgement involved. It is not evil or wrong to mention that and express sympathy for the trickiness involved, especially when one coworker is being a jerk about it.
signed, lifelong fat woman
Yeah, I’m a sight-oriented person, so just putting the snacks in drawers and cupboards would help me cut down on boredom-snacking.
Have you ever had a coworker tell you that you’re raising their insurance premiums by existing while fat? I have. Lots of fun.
Public health is about the aggregate, not restricting the behaviors of particular individuals such as one’s coworkers’ food choices.
The solution is exactly what this office is doing — offering a variety.
What you cannot do is tell adults — this is all you can have. Which is what the vegan is doing. He is trying ti ompose his lifestyle on others.
At some point, adults have to accept their own choices. if you have no willpower then that is still a you problem. It is not on others to keep you from making bad food choices for yourself.
Ummm, the marketing and selling of ultra processed foods are a universal health problem.
But in the context of what’s in the office snack cupboard, it is definitely a “me” problem. Also, dried fruits and nuts are not a terrible snack option, and fizzy drinks are probably seltzers of some sort. Not everything with carbonation = bad for you.
Personal willpower (or lack thereof) is not a public health problem.
No, someone bringing in donuts is not a “public health problem”. It’s just not.
A public health problem is ER’s not requiring masking when there is a pandemic going on. Donuts in the office are not a “public health problem.”
What you chose to put in your mouth is your problem. Exposing others at random to airborne viruses is a public health problem.
Fizzy drinks might include flavored, unsweetened seltzer, though, not always soda. And almost all foods are processed. If you chop or cook something, it’s processed. A granola bar bound with some sugar and baked is processed, sure, but most of us process food that much at home every day.
Never mind that I’ve seen plenty of vegan foods that are easily as processed as any other snack food, sometimes moreso because they avoid animal products and have to use some substitute ingredients.
Yea I was focussing on the ‘fizzy drinks and processed’ food, no disagreement that vegan doesn’t automatically equal ‘unprocessed’
Yeah, but fizzy drinks are not a health devil for most people. And “processed food”? Yeah, we know that a diet that actually avoids all processed is actually bad for you.
Keep in mind that *cooking* is the most common kind of processing of food, and we have a *wealth* of evidence that very few people can maintain health with a purely raw food diet.
And in an office, processed foods (& some fruits) are your only options; you’re not going to pick up some salad fixings or a roast and expect them to get eaten.
But you’re not forcing anyone to eat them or preventing them from bringing their own food. My point was that the processed part is a ship that has kind of sailed–Mr. Vocal Vegan probably processes food at home, too.
The processing food ship sailed before ships and sails were a thing.
Yeah, those little containers of carrot sticks and celery sticks in the produce section are processed; a bag of frozen broccoli spears (minus any added seasoning or sauce) is processed. Any loaf of bread is processed, even if you make it yourself.
I suspect he really means ultra-processed food, but it’s still none of his business.
I agree about the idea that some vegan food is just a processed as the items he is complaining about. And I think that the term “processed foods” may be a bit subjective as it it can mean anything that is cooked/seasoned in the grocery store to one person and to another it may mean the cooked/seasoned with words on the ingredient list you can’t readily identify in their whole state.
I get what you’re saying, but this is part of life when you’re trying to avoid a tempting-to-you food! Anyone trying to manage their diet is familiar with that. And what people think of as ‘unhealthy’ or ‘healthy’ can vary a lot–I don’t think it’s smart for employers to get involved in adjudicating where the line is.
Snacks and drinks at work are usually stored in a cupboard/fridge in the break room. If someone was writing in for tips on managing temptation, I’d suggest bringing their own snacks and drinks so they can skip opening that cabinet/fridge at all–you can create your own opt-in environment even if the snacks are available and free.
Exactly. You can’t demand the rest of your world conform to your diet; the fact that some people might find it difficult to restrain themselves if free cookies are available isn’t a reason why nobody else in your office should ever have them.
Actually, I think putting the snacks in a cupboard/in drawers in the break room is a great option to let people get any snack they want, but not necessarily have it all on display at all times. I don’t know about others, but I end up eating more cookies than I’m hungry for if they’re out on a platter every time I go to refill my coffee than if I have to open a drawer.
Fortunately I work from home, and my partner doesn’t mind me putting all the candy/cookies into a “treat” drawer instead of leaving it out on the counter.
I think they’re already providing the solution to people’s tempation though. Which is to make healthier options available.
I used to work in an office where there were often free bags of chips or cookies out (and the option to buy other stuff from a mchine). Once they started offering free fruit as well – the cookies and chips went untouched for weeks. People loved it.
Then it got too expensive and they took it away and people went back to the chips.
100% agree. Many people do have to restrict what they eat for health reasons. I do, and it’s mentally exhausting to constantly be exposes to foods and have to exert willpower (which is a finite resource) to turn them down. Many times they’re in areas I have to pass multiple times a day to my job–next to the copier. It would be distracting for recovering alcholics to have a bar in the break room, and there’s some evidence that food can be similarly addictive for some people. Of course it’s my choice and my responsibility what to eat, but it would be nice if employers curbed the impulse to have food everywhere all the time in he workplace.
Difference there is nobody needs alcohol, but we do all need to eat.
Right.. which only makes it harder for people who struggle around food? Not sure why that’s a reasonable distinction. We all need to eat is not quite the same as ‘cookies much be located somewhere you walk past multiple times a day’
The point is that it’s reasonable to say “no alcohol at work” but policing what snacks are available is a slippery slope. I understand that it can be hard to pass up X or Y food, but it’s not the same as an open bar.
You’re right that many people do have to restrict what they eat for health reasons, but the restricted foods aren’t just processed foods. Sometimes it’s certain fruits or vegetables, sometimes it’s certain whole grains, sometimes it’s certain types of meat. I get that it’s mentally exhausting to have to exert willpower, but that’s still on your to do.
No need to make that harder than necessary though. If someone has health complications around certain food, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask if they can be moved or even replaced.
“If someone has health complications around certain food, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask if they can be moved or even replaced.”
But that’s not what the LW’s guy is doing.
He’s making assumptions about possible health complications for EVERYONE he works with, presuming that the range of snacks that’s available for EVERYONE is unhealthy, and demanding, repeatedly that the company changes their entire snack program based on his arbitrary standards.
There’s not just one thing people need to restrict themselves from eating for health reasons, though. Some people need to avoid high-calorie foods in general. Others might need to eat high-calorie foods – some people are underweight, or highly active, or have really fast metabolisms. Others have specific nutritional profiles they need to meet, like avoiding sugars of all kinds (including natural sugars like fructose) to avoid a blood sugar spike, avoiding all carbs to stay in ketosis, avoiding sodium to manage heart disease. Someone might need to avoid gluten, or high-fiber foods, or nightshade vegetables, or nuts. Anyone who has any health-based dietary restriction might be deeply tempted by the thing they know they need to avoid.
That’s too much for an employer to juggle. Once an employer starts trying to prioritize ‘healthy’ snacks, they’re opening themselves up to everyone with a health need claiming that the current snack list doesn’t work for them. It’s easier and less fraught to avoid defining which snacks are ‘healthy’–either get a set list of snacks and be done with it, or offer to add snacks based on requests.
You know diet culture is rampant when people compare food to booze.
I see a lot of people in this thread talking about resisting temptation- over, like, chips? It’s not a fresh batch of cookies, with tempting scents wafting thru the office. IMO, an adult openly claiming that a couple of dry snacks in a plastic bag is so tough to pass up as to be mentally wearying is such a huge self-own that all I can do is hope for y’all that you’re able to get out of the diet cult happily and safely.
I mean, at least try to be kind.
As a fat person who is very much over the whole diet culture thing, my kindness circuit on the matter is well and truly burned out.
I don’t care what someone else eats, until they try to make what I eat into their business. Then the gloves come off. Sorry, not sorry.
No, if someone says ‘I struggle with certain foods being very easily available to me’ and you respond with ‘if you find that mentally wearing it’s a huge self-own’ then you are not being kind. That’s not diet culture. Sigh.
And I could see situations where someone could make an entirely reasonable request like “could we store the snacks in the kitchen instead of in the middle of the office? They end up a distraction for me in plain view” or whatever. But most of the snacks don’t sound unreasonably junky (it’s not just chips and cookies, there are nuts and fruit too), and they seem open to adding additional snacks that are maybe more nutrient-dense. Fizzy drink doesn’t mean sugary soda, necessarily–it could be bubbly water/mineral water–and there is coffee and tea, too. It feels very balanced and supportive of most anyone’s food and diet choices. And maybe that’s the crux of it–no setup will perfectly suit everyone, because any setup that perfectly suits someone is terrible for someone else, so you kind of have to accept compromise.
And those unhealthy treats and fizzy drinks are available when people go to the grocery store and get gas and go to the airport and everywhere else, and people have to choose to partake in them there.
I think at most, there could be an agreement to have the “healthy” snacks out visibly and the “unhealthy” snacks in a cupboard, but even that is a reach. (And typically fruit is out on a countertop anyway, so that makes it more visible than candies which are often stored in cupboards.)
And who designates healthy and unhealthy? Are chips unhealthy? What if they’re baked? What if they’re made of vegetables? What if they’re crackers instead? Is soda unhealthy but juice is healthy? What if the soda has no sugar but the juice has added sugar? Is coffee healthy but Redbull unhealthy? Are protein bars healthy, even if they are full of “artificial” ingredients and preservatives and added sugars? Are fruit snacks with no added sugar and 100% fruit unhealthy? Is it healthy to stigmatize eating and place moral judgements on foods?
My point being, keeping a variety of snacks is the best approach. Let people make their own choices and don’t try to define the deeply arbitrary conditions of “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods.
May I suggest working in the public sector. :) I have never had a job where there are free snacks provided as a matter of course, and most of the time, there isn’t free tea or coffee either. Personally, I do prefer it– I would find it stressful to be surrounded by free unlimited food, and it’s not something I expect or want my employer to provide.
Free tea and coffee (and milk) is standard in my industry, but I’ve never worked for a company that provided an actual array of different snack foods. At one point one company I worked for did have a weekly fruit box delivery which you could take your pick from, but that’s the only thing of that sort I’ve seen. Of course people will buy their own and share with the rest of the office – we have a little table where people will put biscuits or cakes or whatever, either stuff they’ve made and brought in or stuff they’ve bought. But it’s just people buying a pack of biscuits and putting them on the communal table.
I worked for a small company once that provided an impressive array of biscuits and snacks. The boss used to just send the admin assistant out with cash to get some from the shops when we ran out. The admin assistant worked out that the company was spending £2k a year on biscuits for an office of like 15-20 of us. The boss didn’t care. That company went under shortly after I left, and while it wasn’t solely the biscuits, the biscuits were an indication of a broader lack of inclination to actually balance the books.
2K a year isn’t that much, especially when the monthly spend on office rent is more than that, not to mention salaries. While not caring about the food cost may have been a symptom of larger issues, by itself it is not a big expense.
Speaking as someone who does struggle with oversnacking, don’t infantilize adults.
I don’t want my employer policing what’s “healthy” enough.
Some adults appear to be conveniently self-infantilizing. Diet culture is a helluva drug.
It is WILD that you are referring to this as ‘diet culture’. I am kinda bemused by the number of people in this thread who are holding the opinion that food is not really related to health and also entirely the individuals fault. Diet culture is full of marketing ‘eat this eat that have my horribly processed shake, if you fail it’s cos you don’t have enough willpower’. Pointing out that the foods available to people hugely influence what they can and do eat (obviously it’s not your employers responsibility but it is your governments problem) is not ‘diet culture’.
Using the above statement as a reason to control one’s coworkers’ food intake *is* diet culture, though.
I am kinda bemused by the number of people in this thread who are holding the opinion that food is not really related to health and also entirely the individuals fault.
Except that actually no one is saying that.
What they are saying is that having a variety of snacks that are not vegan and limited to this guys specific definition of “healthy” does not constitute a “public health problem”. And that most of the foods mentioned by the LW are either considered reasonably healthy in moderation or not bad in moderation as part of a broadly healthy diet. And that it’s not the place of any one person or employer to decide that THEIR choice of “healthy” foods are the only ones that other adults may have.
I didn’t say everyone was saying it, some people absolutely are :p
You seem insistent on mischaracterizing what people are saying.
Ok, but “fizzy drinks and processed foods” doesn’t automatically mean unhealthy. “fizzy drinks” doesn’t have to mean soda with sugar. It could be diet soda, it could be sparkling water, it could even be kombucha, or a combination thereof. “Processed foods” doesn’t have to be cookies or chips, it could be bags of sliced apples or mixed nuts (since LW said they have nuts and fruits available.) They could be dried fruits or seaweed crackers, even. “Processed” doesn’t say anything about the food other than that it went through a process. As someone else pointed out, flour and tofu are both processed foods. Slicing fruits, shelling nuts, milling flour, pressing tofu, drying seaweed, that’s all processing a food.
I’m not saying that there’s nothing that is traditionally considered “unhealthy” offered among the snacks, but a lot of folks in the comments seem to be assuming that *all* of the snacks are “unhealthy” when LW is very clear that they offer things like nuts and fruits, which are traditionally considered “healthy”. And this is why it’s beneficial for *everyone*, not just folks with or recovering from eating disorders, to move away from the “healthy” vs “unhealthy” view of food.
QFT
“Healthy” vs “unhealthy” is just masking a moral judgement (good vs bad) in pseudo health terms.
I mean maybe add some seltzer if it’s only soda, but otherwise, yeah, shut him down.
In addition to being annoying, this can be a problem for people already dealing with EDs. He needs to be shut down.
Came here to echo this. Not that anyone needs a reason to be opposed to food talk in the office, but as someone with ARFID the comments on my food choices were absolutely exhausting. There is no one right diet, and the registered dietician I work for is helping me choose the food I eat as we work toward my dietary goals. Mind your business!
(Also, this is one of the many things I love about WFH – no more comments on what people are or aren’t eating.)
I’m glad you spoke up. I too have ARFID and do not mention it because “well you don’t have to worry about getting fat, so of course you’re not worried about snacking!!?!?!”
My therapist: no food is worse for you than not eating.
Yeah, and seeing the ‘but people SHOULD eat healthier!’ stuff – well it’s hard to explain just why that’s so harmful to people like me.
I have days where my executive function is so bad it is either a weird array of pre packaged and processed foods or not eating at all.
And nobody wants to be around me when my sugar tanks.
I just ate a porkchop sandwich, snack mix, cucumbers, pop, cookies and an apple sauce.
Lol, hard same. ADHD meds are great in some ways but trying to find food that interests me has become a lot more difficult since I started taking them. OTOH, it should not matter to anyone else that I’m currently eating Smartfood for lunch.
Listen, it has the word SMART right in the name. What could be better for work?
I’m really sorry for any of my comments that have been upsetting.
I am not saying ‘people SHOULD eat healthier’, and a healthy diet for someone with a history of disordered eating (or indeed, any number of other health conditions!) will look different for different people.
I do think it is naive to consider this issue solely as one of personal choice. (‘It’s not at all a problem because people choose what to eat’ which seems to be the vibe from quite a lot of people here).
I think the vibe is more “it’s not a problem because it’s none of your business.” And it’s truly not your business.
You simply see the issue differently. A lot of us are over the whole “OMG obesity crisis!?!?!” mindset and have decided to keep our eyes on our own plates.
Maybe retrain as a nutritionist or study the effects of food policies on populations, if this is of interest to you- policing others is not the solution.
I’m sorry, but it is majorly an issue of personal choice. Yes, the availability of a variety of foods can be an issue, (see “food deserts” as one such issue), but it is not an issue to be solved or addressed by one’s workplace.
What I eat, when I eat it, and all that is my business, and maybe my doctor’s, not my workplace or some goddamn busybody who thinks that food is a “public health issue” so they have the right to tell me what and when to eat.
This whole discussion makes me want to go binge on some Girl Scout cookies.
Whatever public health issues there are that are related to food, they won’t be solved by this individual business owner eliminating KitKats from the goodie basket, or whatever. Stop touting individual solutions to systemic problems. Also, what I eat is not your business, or your problem.
Yep. Grew up with a mom with ED and she has a very limited diet due to that and medication interactions (possibly also the same ADHD that runs in the family). Some days I just want my mom to eat. I don’t care what it is as long as it’s food. She’ll refuse meals.
If she’ll eat a Little Debbie snack cake? Awesome. That’s a win. A bag of chips? Also a win. I literally could care less if people don’t think it’s healthy. It’s more unhealthy to starve.
Yep. I once had a department head (young and unqualified for the role in many ways, but that’s neither here nor there) who, every time someone brought in baked goods, would moan loudly in public areas about how she had no willpower, she was gonna get fat, etc. She even did it when she was pregnant. This was at a women’s college, and we had work-study students in the office almost every day. I was hyper-sensitive about it because I know how common it is for students (especially young women) to develop EDs. She was a tyrant so I didn’t feel comfortable raising the issue directly, but every single time she made a comment within earshot of a student, I was ready with a flippant but warm “oh, everything in moderation, right?” or similar reply.
I don’t get why people are so worried about what other people eat. I’m not vegan by choice, but I’m a vegetarian who can’t eat dairy . Nearly every processed food (from granola bars to salty snacks to baked goods) contains dairy. If I worked here, I’d make a request for a couple things I can eat (pretzels, regular Sun Chips) and then continue to not care at all what other people are eating. I’d ask Pushy Vegan for a couple of options he’d like, order it, and then take the good advice offered on shutting him down.
Yep, totally this. I’ve had to stop eating gluten due to an intolerance and yes, I’d probably be miffed if there was NOTHING in the snack cart I could eat, and say ‘hey, can we get some of those gluten free YummyBars or those certified GF Oatysnaxx’ but I certainly wouldn’t give a monkey’s what everyone else was choosing!
For the same reason people think it is okay to share their religious beliefs unsolicited–they think they are right and everyone else is wrong and that they have a moral responsibility to teach us.
I think with diet evangelism it’s also a matter of self esteem. IMO, many people are still of the mindset that their bodies are wrong and need to be fixed and that constant exercise and a perfect, “healthy” diet is the way to do that. Obviously that’s not terribly attainable for most people, and even if they did all of it “perfectly” there’s a good chance they’d have exactly the bodies they have. I kind of think that on some level they see themselves as failures and, to make themselves feel better, evangelize their own diet ideas.
It’s related, also, to a deep belief that being unhealthy in particular ways (possibly in most ways) is a moral failing. So being healthy is to be virtuous and in control of your life.
Also, this kind of thinking cannot fathom a universe where you get a chronic illness or become disabled.
If I worked here, I’d make a request for a couple things I can eat (pretzels, regular Sun Chips) and then continue to not care at all what other people are eating,
It sounds to me that the LW would love you.
You have a reasonable issue, you have a reasonable solution and you’re keeping your eyes on your own page. Perfect!
FWIW – We offer healthy snacks at our office and our fizzy drinks are cans of flavored Pellegrino so fizzy drinks does not necessarily mean traditional soda.
We had a guy like him in a previous office of mine. Very militant vegan and policed everyone’s food and drinks. Management wouldn’t shut him down. We started policing HIS food/drinks and giving him a taste of his own medicine. That stopped him very quickly.
I’m glad it worked for you all, but I feel like in a lot of cases that would just lead to more arguing.
This was pretty much last resort. Management and HR wouldn’t get involved. He would go from table to table in the lunch room policing food. People were starting to eat in their cars to get away from him (we weren’t allowed to eat at our desks), even in the dead of winter. Multiple people would do it to him. It was glorious watching his reactions.
Wow; he’s lucky that’s all he got in retaliation, frankly!
Did management say why they wouldn’t deal with it? Because that’s ridiculous.
If mgmt and HR truly wouldn’t get involved, I guess I’d go ahead and see if he’s still so chatty about my lunch when he’s wearing it.
Yup – you usually find they can dish it out but can’t take it if anyone does the same to them. I’d find the loudest alarm sound on my phone … like the noise when a submarine is about to dive – and play that cranked up any time he came and tried to talk at me.
What makes this behavior so obnoxious is that he doesn’t say —or admit?— his real problem with the food: it’s tempting HIM. (He still needs to stop but one could feel more sympathetic.)
I do strongly suspect, given human nature, that in his pre-vegan life he was a big consumer of the very foods he’s condemning now.
You are onto something here.
Then it’s something that he needs to work on with his doctor, nutritionist, dietician, or therapist. The solution is not to make everyone else in the office follow his diet.
If he’s saying he cares about health specifically because he’s vegan, or became vegan specifically because he cares about health, I have to laugh. A lot of really unhealthy stuff includes absolutely no animal products. Someone who has sensitivities to meat proteins, or has allergies (fish is a really common one) is probably going to be healthier on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but that’s the only situation I can think of.
That is of course on top of him trying to stick his nose into the diets of his adult coworkers. It’s obnoxious and unnecessary.
A vegetarian or vegan diet can also be helpful to someone with high cholesterol or who is trying to lose weight, as long as the food chosen meets certain nutritional requirements. But you’re right that vegan doesn’t automatically mean healthy.
True, if someone’s trigger food for binging is stuff like hamburgers, fried chicken etc, trying out a vegetarian or vegan diet can be helpful in losing weight or with things like high blood pressure or cholesterol (again, like you said, as long as they are eating properly and not just eating French fries for every meal).
I would honestly be curious to see what this guy eats. He seems to be ignoring that the company provides healthy (vegan!) alternatives like nuts and fruit. I’m now imagining him living off the latest fad vegan thing and what a sad life that would be.
I agree with that, the french fries and cookies I’m eating for breakfast right now are vegan but they’re definitely not healthy.
Oreos are vegan.
Potato chips too. And Coca-cola.
And pretty much all deep-fried potato products.
I will note that at least McDonald’s fries aren’t vegan. They aren’t even vegetarian! They contain “natural beef flavoring.”
Yum, beef fries.
Worth noting for British readers that they are vegan here. McDonald’s in the UK use rapeseed and sunflower oil, apparently.
I know the Canadian ones don’t use beef anymore. I have a beef protein sensitivity and I can eat their fries forever.
The US still does and I need to remember that.
McDonald’s stopped using tallow years ago. This keeps getting repeated.
As others have noted, they took it out in some other countries but they still use it in the US.
Source: Work at McDonald’s, handle cases of fries every day. They still list it on the ingredients.
It sounds like he’s one of those vegans who sincerely believes that eating meat and other animal products is immoral, and that anyone who eats animal products is committing murder. If this is the case, then you need to tell him that while he’s allowed to have whatever beliefs he has, many people do not share those beliefs and do not appreciate being lectured on their food choices. Anyone old enough to work in an office already knows that meat is the flesh of dead animals, and those who choose to eat meat clearly have already decided that they’re okay with it. If he keeps pushing it, tell him that it’s no different than a Catholic constantly telling their co-workers that they’re going to Hell if they use contraception.
If his only concern about animal products is health-related, then use the script Allison gave. You also may want to point out that what is unhealthy to one person might be healthy, even necessary, to another person.
This is part of it, too–when it comes to veganism, for many vegans it’s a philosophy as well as a health choice and for some the morality elements are more important to them than the health elements. At that point the issue isn’t only “stop commenting on others’ food choices” but also “stop proselytizing at work.”
If so, well, to him and all those like him–life, virtually all of life, must consume life to live. Full Stop. Even them.
There’s no evidence of this, only his health claims and disdain for processed food.
Except that our understanding of nutrition is still extraordinarily primitive and the only thing we know for sure is universally applicable health advice is drink water, move around, and try to keep your macronutrients kinda balanced (we’re not sure what that balance is?).
We’re all fumbling around in the dark in terms of any sort of 1:1 relationship between what we eat and our health, so in conclusion:
Don’t make pronouncements about what is and isn’t Healthy For All Humans because when scientists whose entire job is to study this, don’t actually know, you certainly don’t.
This is so well put! These diet culture people think they have it figured out and the rest of us are poor rubes that they need to educate. It’s ego. We don’t know as much as we think we do.
If he keeps pushing it, tell him that it’s no different than a Catholic constantly telling their co-workers that they’re going to Hell if they use contraception.
Excellent point!
To quote Hank Hill, “Horses Ass”.
I love this
Everyone has something going on that’s none of your business. Unless you are not only A doctor, but MY doctor, you don’t get to advise me on what I eat. Maybe my doctor wants me eating more granola bars. Lord knows my nutritionist had all kinds of wild ideas for getting more of the vitamins I’m always low on that don’t fit into whatever “healthy foods” are supposed to be.
Your first line should be embroidered and framed.
And if you are my doctor, you only get to give your advice so much (in my case, once, each time I ask you for it).
Pushy physicians can fuck right off with the pushy coworkers and vegans. They don’t help their patients by nagging.
SERIOUSLY. If someone saw my snack diet, they would definitely have questions, because there’s a LOT of salty chips and sour candies in there… except I have chronic issues with dehydration, and sour candies make me drink a ton of water while salty chips balance out the electrolytes. The only difference between that and drinking a sports drink is that I also get a little extra nutrients to keep my brain going in a thought-heavy job.
Yeah, my doctor specifically tells me to try to eat a packet of crisps every day, because it’s a cheap, easy and palatable way to keep my salt levels up and get a quick shot of carbohydrate/sugar into me. By far the easiest and pleasantest way to manage a POTS flare-up!
Of course, people tend not to have a problem with that idea in my case because I’m skinny. Whod’a thought?
Blimmin orthorexics.
I’m tempering my answer because critiquing food choices of others or trying to impose a diet on them is enormously triggering for my eating disorder and I tend to break out in swearing.
Definitely stop him. He may have ‘good intentions’ but this could cause some serious harm. Food is morally neutral – whats lousy for one person may be the one nice thing another can get down their throat. If he’s so distressed about seeing people eat/drink stuff he disapproves of then suggest he gets therapy.
(And no, ‘eating healthy = being healthy’ does. not. work)
“And no, ‘eating healthy = being healthy’ does. not. work”
While some health conditions are genetic and can’t be avoided no matter what you eat, it’s false to say that what you eat has no effect on your health (not that it makes it ok what the vegan co-worker is doing).
Mate, I’m begging you, please don’t. The ‘oh but this stuff is unhealthy and will make you fat and you’ll get diabetes and die’ stuff is exactly how I ended up with an eating disorder.
I’m currently on a ‘whatever gets the calories down me and I don’t throw up’ eating which would include stuff commonly derided as ‘unhealthy’.
Food is morally neutral.
Agreed. I’m at a stage of life where and also on a medication with the side effect that I don’t have any interest in food, so whatever I want to eat is what I eat (since there are so few things I want to eat). I need calories to survive and whatever container those calories come in matters not one bit. I also have a tendency towards hyponatremia so foods that have fewer calories and more water in them (aka so-called healthy foods like fruits and vegetables) happen to give me low blood sugar and terrible headaches, as does drinking even the slightest bit too much water. And whenever anyone says to me that it’s very healthy to drink a lot of water and/or “it’s not possible to drink too much water,” I’m like, oh yeah, wanna bet?
Anyway, you know how some people get all up in arms about how “breast is best” when it comes to feeding babies and shame people who aren’t able or choose not to nurse their babies? And you know how the counter-argument to that is “fed is best”? Well, same story for adults and any other human who needs to eat food.
First off, I want to say that I’m terribly sorry that you had an eating disorder. I have nothing but sympathy for anyone with eating disorders, especially since a very dear friend of mine was once hospitalized for anorexia and almost died.
However, please don’t think I was policing your food or anyone else’s, because I wasn’t. What I was doing was pushing back on your comment that “eating healthy doesn’t make you healthy.’
It’s great that you’ve been able to un-learn the ideas/beliefs that led to your eating disorder in the first place. However, to a lot of people, eating healthy (which, yes, is different for everyone) is exactly what works to make them healthy. While it’s terrible that you had an eating disorder, I do not have the same issues as you when it comes to food, and neither do lots of people. In fact, one reason why it has been difficult for me to eat healthy (that is, what is considered healthy FOR ME) is because I had internalized all the lessons taught to people who are recovering from eating disorders, such as “food is neither good nor bad” and “eat whatever you want.” It took me a long time to realize that while those lessons work for you and for others, they absolutely did NOT work for me and were actually making me very unhealthy.
Just as you said, what’s healthy for one person may be unhealthy for another, and that includes the concept that “nobody should monitor what they eat or else they’ll get eating disorders.” I’m glad it worked for you, but your experience is not universal.
If you can’t stop digging, please go away.
What exactly do you mean? I tried to be as kind and understanding as possible while still making my point. What did I specifically say that you found problematic? I’m not being facetious; I genuinely want to know. I’m neurodivergent and so I don’t always recognize that what I’m doing is inappropriate unless someone tells me as directly as possible. You would be doing me a great kindness to explain exactly what I said that was wrong and why.
Taking this at face value-what you said that was wrong and why-people told you that the point you were making is harmful. Full stop. And you keep making it. It doesn’t matter how king and understanding you feel you’re being, it’s that you keep bringing up. They asked you to stop, you won’t stop, that’s what is wrong and why.
And also, Emily, your edification is your responsibility.
You are doing actual harm to people with EDs right now and you need to stop.
This sentence was problematic: What I was doing was pushing back on your comment that “eating healthy doesn’t make you healthy.’ Not because of how you phrased it, but because that is not something that should be pushed back on. It’s a fact. Eating healthy does not in itself mean that a person is healthy.
It sounds like maybe you misunderstood the sentence and interpreted it as meaning that changing their diet cannot be healthy for anybody and yeah, that isn’t true. There are situations where a change in diet can improve somebody’s health, but…that doesn’t mean that continuing to eat a healthy diet will guarantee their health. There are many health conditions that have nothing to do with diet.
You were arguing essentially against a point Keymaster didn’t make. She didn’t say food has no effect on your health, just that eating healthy does not = being healthy. Those are two very different points.
I’m just saying this because you asked and I hope it doesn’t sound too critical or argumentative.
“It sounds like maybe you misunderstood the sentence and interpreted it as meaning that changing their diet cannot be healthy for anybody and yeah, that isn’t true.”
Yes, that is exactly what happened. I misunderstood.
No, it does not sound too critical or argumentative, and it is exactly the type of answer that I needed to hear.
Eating bad can make you unhealthy. But there are lots of ways of being unhealthy that eating well won’t cure.
No such thing. Eating is not moral. You can’t eat bad. You can’t eat good.
Nothing you eat can guarantee health.
You can eat so-called “perfect” forever and end up with a chronic illness that ruins your health.
This is dangerous rhetoric.
I apologize for what I said before. If you scroll through the entire thread and read what I posted below, you’ll see that due to my neurological condition, I misunderstood your comment. I mistakenly thought you were saying that what you eat *never* affects your health, and that anyone who says otherwise needs to just relax and eat whatever they want, just because you had an eating disorder. I now realize that was not what you intended to say.
I apologize for my previous comment. As you’ll see further down the thread, I am neurodivergent and so I misunderstood your original point. I thought that you were saying “eating healthy never affects your health in any way.” I now realize that that’s not what you said at all. I was out of line.
I think another reason why I reacted the way I did is because in the past, I have seen people cite “eat whatever you want” and similar concepts as the diet that everyone should follow, and if you don’t, then you’re fat-shaming.
I mean, sure–what you eat can and often does affect your health. But it’s so complicated and complex and different for everyone. (One person’s whole grain bread is great fiber for them and agony for me, a gluten-intolerant human, one person’s vitamin-dense plate of veggies is someone else’s sensory nightmare, one person’s little chocolate treat is a nice bonus to the day while for someone else it’s triggering…so complicated and complex!) It really can’t be boiled down into simple platitudes, which is all the more reason to MYOB about other people’s eating unless they specifically ask you–and even then, tread carefully.
Actually most health conditions are genetic or or environmental or otherwise beyond your control beyond *managing* them, and we actually don’t understand the effects of food on our health well enough to even do that very effectively.
I understand (and have struggled with!) the deeply ableist desire we have to believe that we have control over our physical fates, that not eating that donut or faithfully taking that supplement will stave off the inevitability of disability (which all of us will experience eventually, in one form or another) and death.
But at the end of the day, the only universally applicable health advice that all biologists and nutritionists agree on is drink water, move around, and try to eat from different food groups.
We don’t know more than that, and thinking that there’s some sort of precise diet out there that’s going to keep you from disease, disability, or death is magical thinking. Bodies aren’t closed systems, and there are too many other factors in play.
So stop moralising about food.
Aggressively seconding your point on the illusion of control that is behind a lot of ableism.
I wasn’t moralizing about food.
I am going to extend you the grace of assuming you’re genuinely unaware of all of the assumptions packed into your statements, but if you’re going to get involved in these conversations, you need to self-educate so you’re not doing harm with these unexamined ableist assumptions.
As I’ve said in other comments, I misunderstood the point that Keymaster was making. I thought she was saying “modifying your diet can never be healthy for anyone.”
It would be false to say that, which makes it a good thing that Keymaster didn’t say that.
Yes, she did. She said, “And no, ‘eating healthy = being healthy’ does. not. work.”
I’m thinking you might lack some critical reading skills then, because her statement doesn’t mean “this is false.” It means “rigid formulae are not helpful.”
I don’t lack critical reading skills, but I am neurodivergent, which means that I understand the words that I hear (or, in this case, read); but I don’t always understand the words that are implied. Now that you’ve explained her comment, I understand it better.
But eating healthy doesn’t mean being healthy. That’s not to say that for some people, changes to diet can’t improve some health conditions, but eating healthy is no guarantee of good health.
Keymaster of Gozer didn’t say that what you eat has no effect on your health, so…that’s a strawman argument anyway. She just said that eating healthy does not necessarily equal being healthy and it doesn’t. There are a whole load of factors that determine health. Yeah, diet and genetics are two of them, but there are a whole load of others too, including just sheer luck.
(And even when diet does have an impact on somebody’s health, it’s not always as simple as “fatty” foods = unhealthy and fruit and vegetables = healthy. I know you aren’t saying it is but just to add that even if diet can improve somebody’s health, it can be in ways other people wouldn’t expect.)
No, “healthy” does not have one definition. So there is no such thing as eating healthy.
You do not cause any of your health problems by what you eat. The idea that you do is rooted in a gross combination of ableism and capitalism. You cannot prevent old age or illness by some magical food combination.
What you eat bears a relationship to your health, sure. In both directions.
However.
The relationship between what someone eats/what their body looks like/the state of their health is complex, hugely variable, and still both insufficiently understood and so tangled up in damaging societal ideas about attractiveness and morality that “Eat more healthily and you’ll be healthier!” is *just almost never a helpful contribution to the conversation.*
It’s also actually morally okay not to be healthy, or to trade off one kind of health for another.
Plus I promise there’s no one you could say that to to whom it is news, so it’s best as a general rule to just accept that *you don’t need to say that.*
While some health conditions are genetic and can’t be avoided no matter what you eat, it’s false to say that what you eat has no effect on your health
To the extent that this is true – and it is not close to being the whole story! it’s just not relevant here. The relationship between diet and health does exist, but it is waaaaaaaay more complicated than List of Good Foods vs List of Bad Foods. Any approach that pushes that narrative is, at best *deeply* flawed. When it’s in the context of a group of people whose health you know *nothing* about, it’s just nonsensical.
I don’t think he has good intentions at all, but his intentions could not possibly matter less, because the impact he’s having can’t be anything but bad.
Oreos are vegan. Just in case you need a malicious compliance idea.
(I think it is fair for him to ask for things he can eat, within reason. But this? Noooooooooooo.)
As are Tater Tots.
And Bacos!
I cannot find those anywhere anymore, I’m officially setting a calendar reminder for the weekend open thread to talk about delicious processed vegan foods and baked goods, y’all are making me so hungry.
In preparation I’m going to experiment with my open can of coconut cream and making homemade caramel.
I’ve made caramel out of yams with a recipe from Vegan8. It was okay, not rock star good. Now I have to go look for a caramel recipe involving coconut cream since for some reason I have several cans of it.
Check out Julian Solomita he’s been cooking vegan comfort food for years on YouTube. He’s even done caramel sauce.
And French fries. Mmmm, I just had the best French fries ever at a vegan restaurant while visiting a vegan friend in Minneapolis. And an excellent oat milkshake.
And Airheads.
And Tofutti Cuties!
Double-Stuf Oreos must be twice as vegan then!
Hi Everyone, thanks for the comments and other advice! So to clarify – fizzy does include non-sugary pop – like Bubly water and seltzer. I’ve also worked with many vegans & vegetarians who do not try to impose their dietary who go about their life without trying to convert friends/family/coworkers. We also often stock oreo cookies and sometimes when coworkers go on trips to other countries, they bring back interesting flavours we can’t get here.
Awesome. I loved my previous employer for always stocking Bubly, since I drink it by the gallon lol. Some people insist it can’t be as good as water, and those people are wrong.
Yeah, even just unflavored bubbly mineral water tastes way better to me than still water and I absolutely cannot explain why. I just know it to be true.
Agreed. We drink Bubly every single day and buy it by the case.
Mmmmmmmm seltzer.
I love Bubly (and other sparkling waters). I’ve been trying to kick my soft drink habit, and drink more water in general, so sparkling water is a good compromise.
When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I quit drinking soda. I hate artificial sweeteners so I started drinking seltzer, club soda, San Pellegrino knockoffs etc. I really don’t like drinking still water, but anything bubbly and unsweetened makes me happy.
It looks like folks are really going in on “fizzy drinks might not equal soda”, but even if it is soda/pop, let ‘em be! My free Diet Coke every day is sometimes the difference between a good day and the depression winning.
Unhealthy and healthy are not the same for everyone. Mental, emotional, and physical health interplay with religious, cultural, and personal identities in waaaay too complex a way to say “soda is bad” or “nuts are good”. I love the option Alison gave of “if you want to add something, let us know, but we’re not taking anything away.”
I love the option Alison gave of “if you want to add something, let us know, but we’re not taking anything away.”
Same! More variety is awesome. Policing other people’s food choices is crappy.
Put the fruit and water/coffee/tea out in the open and find a cupboard or way to make the other food options less immediately visible? Taking a small extra effort to get food can stop someone if they’re having a food craving or stress-eating but everyone can still get any items they want.
But if I have to walk past chips and cookies multiple times a day, I’m much more likely to deplete my willpower or overeat. Binge eating disorder is very real and more common than anorexia or bulimia, and I feel that environments with food constantly in sight, especially common ones people binge on, trip people up. If people want to help and accommodate EDs, which is great, then they need to consider both the over and under eating sides of the coin. And unfortunately, many snack foods are designed to cause and contribute to binges by bypassing fullness and flavor satiation signals.
He shouldn’t be making comments about other people’s snacks, but I can see an argument for making some items less visible. And vegans are sometimes…annoying. I can’t eat eggs or dairy, but I wouldn’t nag my office endlessly about snacks as long as there was something I could eat in the mix.
What about the person with the nut allergy? Or even worse, the person with a citrus allergy (some dried fruits are processed with lemon juice)? Now they have to hunt to find something they can eat because the office decided accommodating someone else was more important.
There’s no good option. Someone is going to be unhappy. Which is probably why so many offices don’t do this–the number of issues this causes very quickly renders this sort of thing more effort than its worth.
“What about the person with the nut allergy? Or even worse, the person with a citrus allergy (some dried fruits are processed with lemon juice)?”
Then it’s on them (or anyone else who wants/needs something other than what is being offered) to say so.
I think you should follow the thread back on this one. The idea is, “Put the fruit and water/coffee/tea out in the open and find a cupboard or way to make the other food options less immediately visible?”
So if someone with a nut allergy speaks up, are the nuts also going to be hidden away? When does it end? Is it just an endless cycle of hiding things some days and then putting them out others?
With a big enough office you probably can find at least one person for each food option to require it being hidden. Once the repeated request to hide something have reached comedic levels, maybe everything can simply be out in the open again.
Or shorter, full agreement @Dahlia.
*FIST BUMP*
Yes × 1000, and thank you for pointing all of this out!
I can’t decide whether or not the fact that he’s vegan is a red herring (heh). Because
(1) as numerous other people have noted, TONS of food items are both vegan and processed — even ultra-processed! — and TONS of food items are both vegan and “unhealthy”. (French fries, potato chips, and popcorn with butter-flavoured topping and an enormous quantity of salt come to mind. Delicious? HELL YEAH. Vegan? Yes. Fine to eat sometimes? Absolutely! Good for you as a daily snack? Not so much.)
(2) whereas fruit and nuts are both vegan and, unless the nuts are HIGHLY salted, good for you.
So it’s not that there is nothing vegan for this person to eat, and it’s not that there’s nothing “healthy” for him and other people to eat.
Not that any of this matters to the main point, which is that he needs to stop being obnoxious immediately.
I really think when people have dietary preferences or restrictions, it’s incumbent on them to plan ahead and bring snacks that suit their needs. I would hate to be the office manager who has to say chips or whatever are being taken away because some people don’t agree with them being accessible to the entire office.
With an asterisk that if an office is catering a lunch, they should obviously account for different diets. But if we’re talking about free-for-all office snacks, provide the options and if people don’t like it, they don’t need to partake!
I actually think it would be totally reasonable for this person to say “hey, there’s nothing on the office snack roster that I can eat, could we add [X, Y or Z]?” I have absolutely worked in offices where the presence of a new person with different dietary needs caused an adaptation of snack norms — for instance, adding a fruit plate to the previous norm of cake for birthdays when someone arrived who couldn’t eat gluten or dairy — and everyone benefited from the additional variety.
The problem is he’s not wanting to add things he can eat, he’s wanting to remove things everyone else enjoys because he doesn’t approve of them.
Exactly this! As I noted below, if someone kindly asks the person who takes care of ordering if they could add some mixed nuts in addition to the sweet items, most people would be more than happy to do so. But that shouldn’t come at the cost of removing things others like too.
While this wouldn’t be appropriate, without someone shutting this stuff down, it sounds like he’d eventually get told to screw off because this sounds super obnoxious and rude. Just for the sake of harmony, shut this down.
I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m fresh outta fcks to give about annoying people’s feelings. I’d be the one telling him to screw off, guaranteed.
I was just coming here to say the same thing. None of the coworkers has told him to mind his own freakin’ business about food yet? Happy to volunteer and make it as embarrassing as possible for him.
I’m a type 2 diabetic. I don’t follow a keto diet, but it’s still better for me to snack on something like a Slim Jim or cheese or a hard boiled egg, which are processed and animal products. Something like fruit, even though it’s unprocessed, will spike my blood sugar and cause a crash later.
I mean, I still eat fruit, but it has to be balanced with fat and protein, which is more aggro than I want to go through when it’s an hour until quitting time and I need something in my tummy.
If you think it will help, I’ll make a voodoo doll of Mr Nosy Nosher out of cheese and stab it with my lancets.
Yeah, my sister has a digestive condition and sometimes when it’s flaring up she gets to a point where she can only eat boiled rice, plain chicken and boiled potatoes. People would assume she’d be better with a ‘healthy diet with lots of fresh fruit and veg’ but she has to be incredibly careful about what she eats at the best of times, and generally eating food with a lot of fibre, like leafy veg or salads or beans, causes a real problem for her. Obviously no, living on plain chicken and rice isn’t ideal, but it’s what she has to do during a flare-up so that her system can have the time it needs to settle down and heal so that she can start to reintroduce a wider range of foods.
If you think it will help, I’ll make a voodoo doll of Mr Nosy Nosher out of cheese and stab it with my lancets.
Thank you for that visual. It will carry me through the rest of the day.
Please, please do this and take a picture!
I was thinking that if you stab it with pretzels it could be turned into the centerpiece for an hors d’oeuvres tray. Childhood memory of my mom serving cheese cubes on pretzels.
That’s brilliant! Only I’d put out a dish of pretzel sticks so everyone in the office could take turns stabbing it!
Excellent advice from Alison here. I want to underline that when you talk with him, at no point is it helpful or relevant to bring up his qualifications — because that’s a rabbit-hole that’s not worth going down. As Alison pointed out, even if he WERE a trained nutritionist his actions would still be inappropriate.
Adults are allowed to make suboptimal health choices without being lectured for it by co-workers.
I ride a motorcycle; this is unambiguously much much much more dangerous than driving a car.
It would not be remotely appropriate for some rando at work to lecture me about the risk of commuting via motorcycle.
This is a great example! Why do people think food choices are okay to comment on? It just doesn’t make any sense.
and it can be on any food choice. I swear every time one of my co-workers sees me eating a fruit or a vegetable I get a figurative pat on the head in praise. Like a puppy.
Yeah, I’ve had both ‘Oh my God do you KNOW how much sugar is in those things, they’re SO BAD FOR YOU’ while eating a bowl of porridge made with one of those flavoured porridge sachets, and ‘Oh my God do you NEVER eat anything unhealthy, just eat a BURGER or something would you?’ while eating a giant bowl of salad. Can’t win.
I admittedly asked my cousin last year why he’s still, at the tender age of ~63, still riding a motorcycle. But that’s partly because three years ago he broke his back in a motorcycle accident and recovery took about 18 months, and also because I was being an obnoxious cousin. :-) I wouldn’t dream of asking anyone else this question, though, especially not a coworker.
My hiking hobby is definitely less dangerous than motorcycle riding but more dangerous than sitting at home on the couch, and I also would be annoyed if someone were to lecture me about the risk of hiking in the woods vs. walking around a city.
My kids are in Scouts. I’ve had a number of people lecture me on proper hiking gear. Which is ironic, because I’ve been a field geologist for nearly 20 years, and have spent a good portion of my life hiking through pretty rough areas. And yeah, it’s super obnoxious. Understandable when the person is 12 and learning, but from a 50 year old, just no.
It is a sport that does sometimes lead others to try to lecture to us female-presenting folk on gear, routes, and safety. Frustrating and obnoxious, but can be kind of fun when I then spout off my various credentials and know-how. Like, I read about hiking accidents in my spare time (yes, I know I’m weird) and can tell you about all the major incidents that have happened in my local hiking area, don’t you be telling me how cotton kills. I’m wayyyyy past that little details, tyvm.
I absolutely despise for my food choices to be monitored, policed, or commented on by anyone.
((OMG, I’m not even kidding, literally as I was typing that sentence, a coworker leaned over my cubicle wall to look down at my lunch and comment on it.))
Some responses:
Yes, I’m looking forward to eating it.
Sorry, I’m not sharing.
You don’t like my lunch? I don’t like you breathing on my lunch.
[cold hard stare, no words, take a bite of your food and chew while staring with cold hard scary eyes]
Bad co-worker! Virtual smack on the wrist from me!
This is not about being a vegan, this is about health and food policing, which is inappropriate no matter your diet or ethical choices.
This guy needs to eat a big bowl of shut the you know what up. In addition to being wildly out of bounds, he’s made himself The Coworker Everyone Loves to Hate.
Who gave him the right to decide what is healthy? Does he deem broccoli, bananas and spinach healthy? Not to those with kidney disease because of high potassium. He needs to shut his trap because he doesn’t know every individual’s situation and we don’t all have the same needs.
Adults can decided if they want to eat junk food or not. If food is triggering, they can speak up for themselves. I, myself, have discreetly asked that sweets be placed on a table away from mine but no way I’m banning sweets just because of my own issues.
Good point about “good foods” not being suitable for everyone. We switched to brown rice recently but are now switching back to basmati rice bc brown rice isn’t good for my hubby who is prone to kidney stones. Don’t ask me why, I kinda zoned out when he went into the specifics LOL
Please shut him down! No one needs anyone policing their food choices, especially coworkers. On top of that, there’s so many versions of what a healthy diet can look like. I have friends who follow keto, carnivore, low carb, gluten free, processed food free, intermittent fasting, and so many more. Each of these diets is healthy in its own way, and has its own drawbacks. And if someone wants to do nothing and eat whatever, whenever, that’s absolutely their right.
I am passive aggressive and would start ordering Oreos and point out they’re vegan when he complains.
Not to be confused with the “fig fight” I witnessed (look for the AAM “the fraudulent bread pudding, the fig fight, and other food stories from work”)
As much as this guy deserves to be repeatedly pelted with things, hard, it would be a shameful waste of delicious figs.
…he deems to be unhealthy snacks. Which are basically any processed foods.
Ha, homeboy clearly hasn’t heard the “Oreo cookies and Doritos chips are technically vegan” argument, I see. Also, in a way, most foods are “processed.” Including stuff that would be on most vegan-friendly menus. Unless you are like, yanking a carrot straight out of the ground to immediately eat, you are “processing” food in some capacity before you consume it (also, you should maybe not eat vegetables straight from the ground without rinsing them off first, even if pesticides were never used. No one wants to eat dirt).
This would be just as inappropriate as someone complaining all the time that the only office snacks available were Cliff Bars, Luna Bars, and Ollipop drinks, and badgering the LW to throw in some Coke, non-diet iced tea, or some M&M’s (that someone would be me. I wouldn’t actually do that but I’ve never liked stuff like Cliff bars or Luna bars, or the Ollipop-type drinks that are so popular nowadays. Some of us just want to drink a Coke every now and then. But also, if the office is providing something for free, who am I to complain? I can either partake in it, or shut up and get my own item if it’s not something I like. Did this guy miss that lesson in kindergarten???)
I feel like the advised wording is just too wordy and over-explain-y. I had the impression the LW wasn’t his manager, and if I were the one ordering snacks, I’d tell this guy: “Everyone has different food and snack preferences, and I can’t change the whole order to please one employee, so I’m going to keep the snack order the way it is. I’m sure you understand.” The more matter-of-fact you are, the better.
OP, I’d suggest reframing this a bit in your mind. You say that you think his intentions are good, but his intentions don’t matter as much as the impact it has on others. Don’t let his motivations and intentions soften how you approach this. Be direct that he cannot comment on diet/food choices, initiate conversations about diet/food choices and he’s not to comment any further about the options that the company provides. Give him the chance to request an option or two. Then I think you should tell him that any further discussion of this will result in discipline.
The next time that he complains point out which one of the snacks is vegan and smile, unless you manage him. Then you must discuss this issue more in depth. Also since when are fruits or nuts unhealthy? I’m on a strict diet and both are fine in moderation.
I think there are a limited number of situations in which commentary about food is acceptable. First, you need to know that the coworker is open to conversation.
Second, comments should only be positive: “Oh that looks great.” or “Oh your lunch smells amazing.”
Third, anything more than the positive comment has to be initiated by the person with the food.
You can’t police choices. And if the workplace provides food, the way to get something you think is better (which could mean healthier, better for your own diet choices) is to inquire nicely about it. “I notice we order a lot of prepackaged sweet foods. Would it be possible for us to get some pistachios next time we place an order?”
Another situation where it’s appropriate is when someone else’s food will literally make you sick; such as people who are so allergic to peanuts that even smelling them will cause them to have a potentially deadly reaction.
My company break room had a quite nice snack selection – dispensers of things like M&Ms and trail mix, drawers of cookies and granola bars. And then someone very high up declared the Healthy Snack Initiative (those aren’t snarky capitals, that was the actual name it was given), and they apparently were of the mindset that “healthy” and “tasty” had no overlap. The plain M&Ms were replaced with peanut, to the intense frustration of the people with peanut allergies. The chewy granola bars were replaced the hard as a rock kind, and the cookies by suet cakes – I am not kidding, it looked like the stuff you put out for birds.
Our manager set up our own snack section in the corner of one of our offices.
Suet cakes? That is something that my family puts out for birds.
I have a rule about never discussing food or other people’s bodies (or my own). No matter their obsession, people have a very hard time keeping their beliefs to themselves. It’s so annoying and inappropriate.
OMG, the food police! Why do people do this? As someone who is overweight (yes, I am aware and I’m working on it privately, thank you very much), I’ve been in situations at work where I was definitely judged for eating a treat provided by the office, like birthday cake or cookies provided at a meeting, etc. I am allowed to have a piece of cake or a cookie like anyone else. I’m not trying to take a whole tray of food like we have seen some people post about in other threads. But the judgmental attitude of some people is beyond me. I don’t care what other people do if they aren’t hurting anyone. Why do food police try and impose their judgments on others?
Y’all, I’m vegan-ish and I literally could not be LESS invested in what my coworkers choose to eat. It’s none of my business! The only time I ever have an issue with anything food related at work is when I am given bags of Slim Jims for Employee Appreciation week (everyone knows we don’t eat meat) or when I get told that I can just choose to eat meat when I ask if we can choose a restaurant with a few vegetarian options for office holiday lunches. That dude is just a jerk.
Agreed! So long as there is vegan-ish food for me to eat, what do I care? At this point I just think it’s boring how much people talk about other people’s food!
No offense intended to non-preachy vegans, but I felt exactly 0% surprised when LW shared this person is a vegan.
Same!
Look, I agree he’s being a tool.
Obviously I don’t have photos of your snack area, but I don’t think the vegan dude was whinging about the fruit and nuts so I have to assume there’s individually packaged long life sweets and respond to that:
If you stock biscuits and snickers and coke… people snack on them.
If you have a lolly jar and buy redskins by the kilo… people snack on them. Experience! And they eat way more of them than they realise, and more than they’re happy with, and they don’t help with hunger. And then they appreciate when the lolly jar is gone because they were eating two handfuls of peanut m&m’s every day as habit instead of as a treat and enjoying them…
I *personally* would stick with tea and coffee supplies and filtered water instead of cans of drink, nuts, fruits, and *sometimes* biscuits, and aim for filling snacks like your granola bars. It’s not as fun as the snickers and coke but it’s legitimately food.
And anyone who wants sweetened, caffienated water can just add whatever amount they want to their water, in a tea or coffee.
People are really judgy about other people’s eating and drinking preferences, and it really needs to stop. It’s not inherently less professional to drink caffeinated energy drinks at work than coffee or tea.
That said, even at my office we have a coffee vending machine that’s better than most because it at least grinds the coffee separately for every cup, even if the whitening’s a laxative for me, so at work I drink my coffee black with a dash of cold water. There’s also a large selection of teas, but no other beverages (our tap water is drinkable and tastes great, and it actually contains less bacteria than bottled water).
Why are there so many stories about vegans basically proselytizing to EVERYONE about what they think everyone should eat?
As someone who spent 20 years as a vegetarian, I NEVER ONCE told anyone they shouldn’t eat meat.
I’d have ZERO patience for this in the office. I don’t even like it when I’m in a group and all the women start talking about what their diet is. I don’t have an ED but even I would get annoyed like “can I not just eat my lunch and listen to office gossip or tv recaps or anything other than why she won’t eat bread and you don’t do dairy and she won’t eat sugar?” I like to eat my food, not talk about eating my food.
I had cancer and only lost a 6# tumor. MY problem, is I now have a permanent food aversion. Mostly to the smell of cooking meat. but also perfume, dryer sheets & some other random things that may not bother me one day but make me gag the next.
So I can eat chicken, fish and hamburger. Sounds good but extremely boring. and of course I need to lose weight anyway, but can only eat so much salad, really no other veg, tho I try. No issues with fruit. Yes I went to a counselor who had no suggestions..apparently its very common after chemo… & counseling isn’t going to fix this & just will waste my time and money. I go to enough Dr appts. So I’m very understanding of different eating habits, food or eating disorders etc.
I still have to tell people ” yes this looks delicious, but I absolutely don’t want any”. And my other docs still ask if things have gotten better.. ” no, its permanent & I don’t necessarily know what will set it off. ” Its a struggle.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 31 years, vegan for part of that time, and I used to wonder why people who ate with me treated me like I was the food police. I guess it’s people like this guy. Not only are people like this rude and very intrusive, but in my experience, they also don’t know what they’re talking about and are completely clueless what nutrition, just picking it up from random sources and evangelizing it.