[dustyn]

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Eliane, I would almost always assume I know the answer to this question, but you often surprise me....if someone invited you to dinner and served something like beef carpaccio, bacon-srapped scallops and lamb chops, would you consider that rude? Note that you never told these people you were a vegetarian, let's just say it's someone you work with. Maybe your coworker has seen you eat seaweed and pine nuts for lunch every day but just assumed you ate meat also. Rude or not rude?

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I think that were I to invite somebody over for dinner at my place, I would usually explicitly ask ahead of time whether or not they had any dietary restrictions just to avoid this kind of thing. I'm not sure it's rude to fail to do this, but especially since vegetarianism isn't particularly rare it seems like a prudent thing to do. I also think that if I were a vegetarian, I would give people a heads-up about that before having them over for dinner, too.

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I agree with this, not just because of the vegetarian factor, but more because lots of people have issues eating things like peanuts, lactose products, etc.