People follow different dietary lifestyles for many different reasons including health, religious reasons, moral reasons, personal preference, and more.

What would you do if you had a neighbor who was a vegetarian for religious reasons, but they ate certain foods that you believe they don’t realize contain animal products?

That is the situation the vegetarian in this story is facing, and she isn’t sure whether she should tell her neighbors or not.

WIBTA if I tell my vegetarian neighbors they are eating animal byproducts?

My neighbors are vegetarian for religious reasons.

I do know that they weren’t always vegetarian and only chose to be more strict about their diet in the last few years.

There are many reasons to go vegetarian.

I am also a vegetarian but just as a personal choice.

They are raising their daughter as a vegetarian as well, while my daughter and husband both eat any meat products they want.

My daughter likes to go to their house to play and will regularly come home with things like gummy bears and marshmallow treats that are made with pork gelatin.

They also get pizza from a place near us that uses cheeses made with calf rennet.

There are a few other small examples like that.

When we first moved to the neighborhood there was a big block party.

My neighbor offered me Jell-O from the table and I told her I don’t eat it because it contains pork.

So, they clearly don’t do a lot of research on their own.

She was genuinely surprised that it was made with pork.

I didn’t say anything about gelatin just the Jell-O so i don’t know if she knows to look for that.

This type of thing is easy to overlook.

It’s all small things that most people don’t even know are made from a life.

Its all very easy to overlook.

My husband thinks I should just leave it and let ignorance be bliss for them but again, he’s not a vegetarian so it wouldn’t bother him.

He thinks I would be a jerk because it would be ruining their daughters favorite snacks and I shouldn’t do that to a kid.

I just feel like if it’s important enough for you to raise your whole family in accordance with a certain lifestyle then you maybe would want a heads up that something is slipping through the cracks.

I think they would appreciate the information, as long as it was given nicely.

All of these things have very similar vegetarian alternatives (Except the marshmallows. They suck.) so it would be an easy fix but since it’s tied to their belief system, i’m worried I would be uneccessarily causing guilt.

So, WIBTA if I said something or should I just leave it and mind my own business?

WIBTA?

As long as you say it in a nice and non-judgmental way, and you already have a good relationship with them, I think it would be the right thing to do.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

A strict vegetarian would want to be aware.

This person says to let them know, but gently.

It all comes down to how she approaches them.

Here is someone saying not to gatekeep vegetarianism.

This person says to keep this information to herself.

This needs to be handled with lots of kindness.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.