I made a suckling pig, a piglet roasted whole, for our annual family gathering with people of all age groups (big family). I wasn’t expecting the little kids to eat any of it since the head was still on it, but I thought more of the adults would try it. No one touched it except one of my cousins, an uncle and of course me.
I was told by my aunt, the oldest of the family, that I should not have brought something "that disgusting" to the gathering. I tried to argue that there were other meat dishes there as well and that those were also cute animals once, but I was shut down and because I didn’t think it was worth the fight, I decided to compromise and remove it from the table and put it back in my car.
So should I have just cut the head off to make it less recognizable as a living being or was I in the right to argue that it is hypocrisy to eat meat and then get upset when you are reminded about where that meat came from?
PS: Once the party was ending and I was leaving, my uncle came outside with me and got half of the remaining pig, none of it was wasted
NTA. People who eat meat but can’t look at a whole dead animal before eating it are hypocrites.
Newsflash: everyone’s a hypocrite about something. Even you.
I dont think you’re the asshole, but I probably would have asked the host. I know one of my family members had one at their engagement party. It was a cultural thing for his wife’s family to have, but i could see why some would be bothered by it.
I eat meat-but I prefer not having it look back at me🤣
I mean at a certain point you’ve gotta read the room. Do you really not know your family well enough to know how that would go? YTA
Ive been to someone else’s family bbq that had one and everyone there was into it as tradition, but I can easily tell you right now that a suckling pig (ESPECIALLY with the head still on) would offend everyone in my family…. I don’t have to ask them to know that.
Yeah this is what I don’t get. If OP *didn’t* know their family well enough, they could have asked!
Even head aside, baby animals like sucking pig and veal are somewhat controversial (at least in the US).
I’m Chinese and suckling pig is served at banquets and considered a celebratory dish. Head and all. Delicious.
That’s why they said OP needs to “read the room”. Some people/cultures are fine with it. Some aren’t. Neither are wrong, but OP made a lot of assumptions without checking if it’s ok
YTA – I appreciate the sentiment: That it’s hypocritical to eat “anonymous” meat, and be disgusted by a whole pig. And in many cultures/ families it would have been totally ok to serve the pig with its head, no problem. However, since people in your family were so upset, I suspect that you knew how they would react, but wanted to do it anyway, and are a bit smug about it afterwards (because you were “right” – meat is meat).
I say this as a vegetarian who is often annoyed by how anonymous meat is packed, and how far people are from thinking about what it really is. I still think you should have respected your family culture. There’s a time and a place for everything.
Lmfao. Vegetarian here laughing at this post.
NTA. All you did was show your family the face of what they eat, which so many people like to pretend doesn’t exist. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard people say “you can’t even tell what it was before it was on your plate!” or some similar iteration when talking about eating meat.
Your family just can’t have their pig and eat it too, I guess!
Disclaimer to avoid a bunch of downvotes (that I’ll probably get anyway): I don’t care what other people do with their lives. You wanna eat meat then eat it. You wanna be a vegan then go for it. Keto? Neato. Whatever. People should be able to make their own decisions about their own body and what they put in it!
INFO: did you tell people you were bringing it?
In my experience, a whole pig is one of those things that you only do either when you have a group of people who have committed in advance to eating the pig OR it’s a part of the host and most of the guests culture. One doesn’t just whole pig.
“One doesn’t just whole pig.” 💀❤️