Regardless of your choice (to eat meat or not, to include eggs or dairy or not) and regardless of your role (host or guest), it is simply rude to draw attention to oneself or another over a personal matter of any type. I have met plenty of vegans and some vegetarians who turn up their noses at a host's or hostess's well prepared meal with unbearably smug comments along the lines of, "I never eat anything with a face." Conversely, I have witnessed merely awkward or even belligerent hosts fuss, challenge or even berate a guest who has dietary restrictions -- whether vegetarian, allergic or religious in origin. Either way, it's unpleasant and unkind and gives everyone indigestion. As a cook, this a crime!

Such behavior violates a fundamental principle of hospitality: coming together to break bread is the ultimate gesture of friendship and unity. To use the occasion to wage a battle or put someone on the spot as a vegetarian freak or a meat eating moral degenerate is a betrayal of trust, as well as the act of spoil sport. Meals are a time for happiness and sharing, not attacking or pontificating. Nothing is more boring than a biased know-it-all.

If you are the host or hostess, your guests' comfort and delight is your number one priority. So Vegetarian hosts should make an effort to please more mainstream palates and not turn a dinner party into an "educational" field trip to tofu-land. Vegetarian and Omnivore hosts alike can serve an Italian or Asian meal as both cuisines offer many meatless choices that omnivores will savor without even noticing. Omnivores can augment a meated meal by making a hearty side dish that doubles as a vegetarian main course. Or if not a talented and generous-spirited host, folks can gather at a restaurant and make their own selections.

Keep the conversation moving and lively. Urge guests to seek what is true or interesting in what another says to explore another's thoughts, not pounce like a prosecuting attorney on the first aspect they might find to disagree with. I once had a sister-in-law who mistook interrogation for conversation and never failed to lecture vegetarians on the foolhardiness of their path. As a host or responsible guest, do not allow anyone to bog down the party with the tedium of food choices or pretentious, semi-accurate debates of the virtues of one path over the other when the facts do not bear out that either extreme is necessarily healthier. Haphazard vegetarians who do not carefully plan their diets are as in trouble as McDonalds wolfing carnivores. When all is said and done, it always turns out to be happiness and exercise that are the key factor to health and longevity, not food per se. Self-righteousness, whether or not that includes meat, is probably the top killer! When will there be a study on that, I wonder?