I was at a dinner meeting yesterday evening. We met in the community room of my food coop. This was a special meeting, a kind of board retreat. The expectation was that people could pick up dinner at the coop to be eaten during the meeting. I overheard one of the board member turn to another who is a vegetarian and ask her if she would be offended by the meat item that this member had purchased. I was kind of horrified that someone felt the need to apologize in this way for eating meat. The vegetarian assured her that it was just fine but I know that there are others in that community who would not be polite or nice. Since I don't eat dinner I ate nothing and a got some questions about why I wasn't buying food but no criticism.