I'm not defending anyone getting in your face... If I were vegetarian I wouldn't want to be preached to about Atkins, either!

But I really don't like wholesale disparagement of others... to me talking about "those vegans" is no different than talking about "those Jews" or "those Arabs" or - fill in the blank. People are entitled to their belief systems, and deserve respect. What the person in the supermarket did wrong was try to thrust her views on another. Period. The fact that those were vegan views is irrelevant.

I can't tell you how many times I've been told that I will go to hell because I'm not born again, or that as a woman it is my job to bring children into the world, or any other number of beliefs that I don't subscribe to, but the people espousing them did. It doesn't make Christianity or Judaism wrong in my book, it just means that those particular people were nudniks ( = pains in the a$$).