Vegetarians: Airports Hate You

Sent to me from the lovely Stephanie:

Airport Complaint: Lack of vegetarian options. I got bumped to another flight, leaving me six hours in the Orlando airport with my own devices. Out of the five restaurants near Gate 71, the only meat-free option (besides coffee) was a deep fried veggie burger. Normally I stay clear of fast food altogether, but the only things I ate before this were two homemade doughnuts a la Mom. A similar situation arose at LaGuardia last week and I ended up using my meal voucher on french fries.

Now, I can’t say I’m exactly surprised either. At JFK and Minneapolis, I see duty free stores, chocolate/candy shops, souvenir shops (with stupid sweatshirts that say stuff like “Our state bird is the mosquito!”) and fast food restaurants. If I’m absolutely starving to death, I might buy the $1 side salads from the fast food lines. A pretzel, pastry, or a chocolate bar can never be a healthy or satisfying meal (a grande sized fat laden mocha from Starbucks is another story). The scary thing about french fries, is that you don’t know if it’s fried in animal oil or vegetable oil (often tampered with a meat product anyways). The last time that I tried to make sure my food was vegetarian friendly was Christmas Day at JFK. The dialogue went something like this:

Me: Is this vegetarian?
Lady: They’re vegetables.
Me: No. Is there ANY kind of meat products in it?
Lady: It’s just vegetables.
Me: So it’s vegetarian friendly?
Lady: There might be pieces of chicken and stuff.

Vegetarianism is not a hard word to comprehend. Airports, why the hate? Because we choose to be vegetarian and you prefer to clog our arteries with random crap out of sheer hate? Maybe, you don’t want our money HUH? After hours of research, I found that a lot of the news coverage and website on vegetarian options in airports result in topics about “eating healthy”. Apparently, the Detroit airport offering Low-Fat vegetarian options is HUGE news. I guess I am a bit negative, but any idiot knows that vegetarian foods can be unhealthy…especially if it’s deep fried or covered in cheese. So airports, don’t go crying when the ACLU sues you because a vegetarian has a long layover and dies in the corner of your dirty airport bathroom stalls in their “Go Giants!” sweatshirt. If carnivores, omnivores, alcoholics, and Asians are served…why can’t you serve vegetarians?

On a friendly closing note, Serious Eats wrote something similar about traveling vegans.