A win for the (non-vegan) host

It isn’t surprising when a vegan opens your fridge and starts making comments that omnivores feel invaded.
At the table, here’s a vegan guest criticising the food. This is food lovingly prepared for the guests at the table, the host being very pissed off by the vegan’s comments. Making a dinner for guests is perhaps the most creative thing she does (cooking a lovely meal, inviting friends over to eat it, and then – WHAM – some unlovely person turns their nose up at it).
This is where vegans should be careful about accepting invitations and not spelling out our own food requirements first. We shouldn’t find ourselves in a situation where we feel the need to caste judgements like this. It always looks like a good opportunity at the time but inevitably causes big problems for vegans. A negative comment about the provenance of ‘the food’ can darkens the whole atmosphere - when the vegan guest says, “Yes, it may be creative cuisine but it’s not good food (in other words, not good enough for me)”. That amounts to a big slap in the face not only for the host but to everyone else enjoying the food. There’s nothing like a simple plate of food to cause a disturbance. Feelings get hurt, offence is caused, the vegan sees a golden opportunity to educate everyone at the table about vegan principle …
How often does something like this happen over the dinner table?
Vegans who ‘ride rough shod’ over people’s feelings, in this case giving the cook a big wake up call, might feel they’ve done a good job by speaking out. They’ve spoken up for the animals. But it’s likely to seem to the cook (and her dinner guests) as if we’re questioning her rights, as a cook, to cook the food she’s chosen. That’s not what the creative-cook needs to hear … although in a funny way it might well be: it may stimulate her friends to back her up and draw more praise than she’d normally get. Also the ‘incident with the vegan’ is likely to prove valuable, future table-talk. Each person there might embellish the incident to serve their own purpose; they’ll discuss the event with great relish (“when the vegan came round to dinner - the vegan who, incidentally, won’t be invited around again!”). “I nearly said to him …”.
Food fights always make good stories for retelling and exaggerating but can easily sour whole relationships. Vegans - beware dinner invitations!