Listen, there are a lot of diet groups and sub-groups out there, and it can be difficult to keep track of what they all mean. Especially when you get into any diet group that eliminates some, but not all, animal products.
After all, unless you’re a certified nutritionist, you’d likely not know all the various sub-groups between vegetarianism, which abstains from consuming all animal flesh products, and veganism, which abstains from all animal products entirely—including the lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet (no meat but allows eggs and dairy), the lacto-vegetarian diet (no meat or eggs but allows dairy), the ovo-vegetarian diet (no meat dairy products but allows eggs), and so on.
Because not everyone is aware of these subtle nuances, it can lead to inevitable misunderstandings at food gatherings. Which brings us to the age-old “are eggs dairy” issue.
As one woman shared online, she had been trying to be generous by bringing over a dessert to her friend’s dinner party. The friend in question asked that she make a dessert without dairy, since her daughter had recently stopped eating it.
Easy peasy, since the woman knew a “great cake recipe with no dairy.” She brought said cake. It was “a hit.” And everything seemed to go off without a hitch…until the woman was asked to share the recipe.
No good deed goes unpunished.Photo credit: Canva
“My friend asked for the recipe and I told her. When I got to the eggs her daughter became upset and ran upstairs. My friend asked why I put eggs in the cake. I said the eggs were responsible for the spongy texture. She said the cake wasn’t dairy free. I said it was. There is no milk or milk products in the cake, no cheese, no butter, etc…” the woman wrote.
When her friends insisted that eggs were dairy, the woman was understandably confused, and stated that, to her understanding, only milk and cheese products were considered dairy. The friend then argued that diary is “anything that comes from an animal.” Although, when the friend asked if, under that logic, honey was considered dairy, the friend said “no, because bees are insects.”
As one person suggested, next time she could just bring wine. Photo credit: Canva
The woman ended up apologizing for upsetting her friend, and wondered if she had been in the wrong.
In case you’re not sure who is in the wrong here, we can say definitively, without an iota of doubt that no, eggs are not dairy. They are both animal products, and are often both sold in the dairy aisle in the grocery stores, leading some folks to group them together. But they are not one and the same.
Folks in the comments largely sided with the cake maker on this one, and suspected that the mother actually meant to request no animal products, rather than no dairy.
Another case for why words matter. Photo credit: Canva
“I think that mom is confused about the terminology,” one person wrote.
Another plainly stated that “she needed to say vegan because that is not the same as dairy free,” while another surmised, “Yeah, it sounds like she didn’t want to say her daughter is going through a vegan ‘phase’ and instead said no dairy, like to sound like an allergy almost?”
Obviously ethics play a big part in someone’s alternative diet choices, as well as painful intolerances. So when wires get crossed, it can be emotionally jarring. However, as one person put it, “in the age of Google” it really behooves us all to make sure what words actually mean to avoid unnecessary tiffs and hurt feelings…or tummies.
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