In Edible Ethos, Chetanya Pandey ’27 dives into the wild world of eating with a pinch of humor, a dash of honesty and a whole lot of love for plants. From simple switches to kitchen wizardry, this column explores how making small, conscious food choices can help save the planet — and your taste buds.

There are moments in life — albeit small and inconsequential ones — that reveal the underlying structure of a collective discomfort. One such occurrence recurs with quiet predictability: a dinner invitation, a restaurant menu and a question asked.

“Could you check if the aioli is vegan?”

It’s a question that is not about ingredients nor wholly about food. It is a question that hovers directly above a larger cultural unease about choice, about conviction and about the mild but perceptible irritation provoked when someone — even gently — deviates from the norm. 

For a big portion of my life, I asked it hesitantly, with the softening preface of “sorry to bother…” or “it’s okay if not…” These were not merely niceties but reflexive attempts to temper the audacity of a question that implies an ethical boundary. To inquire about ingredients was to mark oneself as different, to refuse absorption into the ambient consensus, to insist that what lies beneath the surface matters. And for this, one is trained to apologize.

Yet to apologize is also to admit fault. And what fault is there in acting with regard for unseen lives and environmental consequences rendered invisible by packaging and presentation?

I no longer apologize.

To eat vegan is not, as it is often caricatured, an act of moralization or a disruption for disruption’s sake. It is to bear witness in the smallest of ways. To refuse — quietly, even awkwardly — the indifference that makes violence ordinary. To ask what is in the broth is to ask what systems are held together by our silence and what might unravel if we ceased to be silent.

Many seek to evade the confrontation inherently embedded in discussions of ethical consumption. But think of philosopher Theodor Adorno, who observed of postwar Germany that the work of confronting the past was often evaded in favor of euphemism and closure. To look too closely is to lose comfort. Better not to ask. 

In this sense, the question of the aioli becomes emblematic — not of a dietary preference but of a broader resistance to forgetting.

I have come to believe that discomfort is a necessity. In fact, it’s a sign that the question matters.

At Stanford, a place that fashions itself as a crucible for inquiry and innovation, it is important that many students be unafraid to question power and not fall silent at the table. In this context, to ask about animal products doesn’t trouble culinary norms but gently indicts a system of consumption that thrives on disavowal.

Still, things are shifting. Friends now tell me what’s vegan before I ask. Menus have changed. Plant-based options appear not as afterthoughts but thoughtful creations. 

All this boils down to one way of navigating life my mother taught me: if you don’t ask for it, you don’t get it. Dear vegans, environmentalists and animal lovers: we know we have a cause worth fighting for. Let’s collectively ask for a change.