Woman slammed for letting her vegan friend have a macaron: ‘This is so disrespectful’

A woman is facing some backlash for letting her vegan friend eat a macaron and hesitating to tell her because she looked so “happy” eating it.

In a video posted on TikTok on January 29, @lilibilifil, Lili, is filming her friend eating a macaron. However, this friend is a vegan and didn’t realise that this cookie didn’t meet her dietary restrictions.

“My friend who is a vegan of six years is eating a macaron for the first time and looks so happy,” the text over the video reads. “I don’t want to tell her.”

Lili also emphasised that she was nervous to tell her friend about this treat, as the caption reads: “bestie I’m afraid to tell you this.”.

This video has over 1.4m views, so far, with viewers in the comments criticising Lili for not telling her friend that the macaron wasn’t vegan.

“Always tell us, we are vegan for a reason,” one viewer wrote, while another said: “If this isn’t a joke this is so disrespectful honestly.”

“This is not okay, this is exactly like feeding you possum or something & then laughing abt it,” a comment reads.

While some viewers wondered if this video was a joke, they still felt like it was insensitive of Lili to appear to let her friend eat the macaron.

“That’s not funny some people are vegan by religion it’s sad that [you’re] letting her make that mistake and destroy all her hard work,” one viewer said.

“Just because she’s happy doesn’t mean it’s alright,” another TikTok user wrote. “If I had a vegan friend and they were about to eat something they aren’t supposed to without [knowing].”

On the opposite side of the coin, a few TikTok users said that they agreed with how Lili handled this situation.

“Why are you all telling her that she’s being a bad friend?” a comment reads. “I would’ve done the same. The other girl just looks happy.”

As noted by Harvard Medical School, a vegan diet consists of no “meat, fish, dairy, or eggs.” However, macarons always have some flavour of filling in them, which can consist of dairy products. But, there are ways to make this treat vegan, such as using coconut or almond milk, along with eliminating all other dairy products and eggs when baking.

Speaking to The Independent, Lili said that she did end up telling her friend that the macaron wasn’t vegan. When they bought it, they were told that this macaron was dairy-free. However, Lili didn’t realise there were egg whites in it. As noted by Healthline, eggs aren’t considered a dairy product.

“The video was just as a memory of her eating her first macaron and after that, I started thinking if eggs were dairy,” she explained. “She didn’t react badly. All I said was, ‘wait, are eggs dairy cause I think macarons are egg whites,’ and then we were like ‘oh no’ and giggled about it. But it’s okay she laughed it off and doesn’t think it “ruined” her veganism she just tries her best to be vegan!”

However, one thing that Lili didn’t expect was for so many people on TikTok to respond to this video. “I thought of the caption for the video because I thought it was a funny moment between us and friends,” she said. “I never thought it would blow up to where everyone has made up their own opinion over a situation they were not there to see.”