A man who served his vegetarian dinner guests food that had been cooked in pork fat has been left baffled by the fact that they weren't thrilled with their dinner.
The man explained in a Reddit post that his best friend and her family chose to take up the vegetarian lifestyle around two years ago, and did so for health reasons rather than ethical ones.
He also said that at a recent dinner party in celebration of the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, he cooked an array of different fillings for a taco bar and made sure to include plant protein options for the four vegetarians who were attending.
However, the man served black beans as an optional side but failed to leave any notes to tell guests he'd cooked them using pork fat - because he didn't think it would matter.
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In his post, he said: "My best friend and her family went vegetarian about two years ago. This is strictly for health reasons, not religion or morals/activism. They were already super healthy in their eating and activity habits but decided to cut out meat to take it even further.
"Any time we host them I have made sure there are good vegetarian options or that everything is vegetarian, depending on who else is there. We had a Cinco de Mayo party tonight with them and some other friends that we hosted.
"I made a taco bar because it would be very easy to do a plant protein, meat protein, and everything else is naturally vegetarian. One of the other items included in the bar was black beans. I have always cooked my beans with some sort of meat for flavour. Today I decided to leave the meat out for the vegetarians, but I did use some fat from the pork shoulder to saute the onions and garlic that got mixed into the beans.
"I understand that this technically made the beans non-vegetarian since there was an animal product in it, but I figured since it was such a small component of the dish that it really wouldn't matter based on my friend's reason for being vegetarian. Health-wise, animal fat and plant fats have roughly the same macros, and it was only a couple of tablespoons in the entire pot."
But when the guests tucked into their food and asked the man how he cooked his beans, they were understandably furious when they found out what he had done.
He added: "Cut to dinner. Everyone was having a great time and ate a lot, including everyone having some of the beans. Afterwards, one of my friends and I were chatting. She was raving about the beans and asked how I had made them. I told her exactly how and my friend, who was nearby, turned to me and said 'wait there was pork in the beans?'
"I said it was just a bit of the fat for sauteeing the onions and garlic but she got p***ed and said, 'you know my family is vegetarian, why would you trick us like that?'
"I tried to explain my thought process and that I wasn't trying to be malicious, I really didn't think it was that big of a deal but she wasn't having it. They left pretty quickly after that."
Commenters on the Reddit post were baffled by the man's actions, with many saying people have a right to know what's in their food, whether they're vegetarian or not.
One person said: "It doesn’t matter what their reasons are, people have a right to know what’s in their food and you knowingly deceived them. Not cool at all."
While another added: "It doesn't matter what their reason for being vegetarian is. I don't eat pork because it grosses me out and I would be p***ed if someone assumed I'd be okay with pork fat in my food."
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