Litsky and his wife, Toby, who are both vegans, decided to stop eating meat, dairy, and fat last year to battle their high cholesterol, according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. When they eat out at Italian restaurants, they bring their own pasta after they learned that not all noodles are whole-grain as sometimes advertised.
“We’ve gone to at least 50 or 60 restaurants in the past year-and-a-half and we’ve never had an issue,” he told the paper. “They drop it in water and we can use red marinara tomato sauce and we ask for mushrooms and onions and red pepper if they have it.”
But when they went to a Monticello restaurant, they were charged the full $24 for an entree and were not allowed to use a $50 coupon.”
“(The owner of the restaurant) said, ‘You come here on a Saturday night and order a custom meal. I have to charge you extra,’“ Litsky told the Star-Ledger. ”I said, ‘But you’ve already set the precedent where you charged me a lot less than that on several occasions,’ and she said that was the old manager’s decision and this was the new price.”
The restaurant then called the police and they threatened to detain him for theft. But Litsky ultimately decided to pay the bill.
The restaurant owner told the newspaper that they were wrong in not giving him a discount and refunded him the $12.
The term “vegan” was first coined in the 1940s by Donald Watson, who headed the Vegan Society, the oldest of such organizations.
Watson created the term and concept to describe a person who is vegetarian but who also ate no eggs or consumed dairy products.
In an interview in 2007, Watson said that in the early days of the Vegan Society, “there was much concern because I was flouting nearly every medical advice at that time” by not eating animal protein.
“Later when we formed The Vegan Society, criticism was almost general - some of it in the form of concern about what we might be doing to our bodies,” he added.
Watson continued: “The kindest criticism we received was that we “meant well,” or that the sheer problems arising from choosing to live in a world catering mainly for other people would get us down in the end. Other critics said, “It seems to suit you” without realizing that it might suit them too if only they would try it.”
Friends Read Free