Hi restrangled
I feel your situation, because I've had to deal with similar in the past couple of years. First of all one teenager decided to become vegetarian, almost 3 years ago. Another one decided to follow suit a year or so later, but would partake of fish/seafood. In the meantime, I started trying to eat more healthfully, and then our 20-something-year-old started weight lifting and asking for lots of protein. Then Mr Scully decided he wanted to try being a vegan.
I am NOT a short order cook. I will NOT prepare a separate meal for each person in the house. I made it very clear that the grown-ups in the house (including the teenagers), if they want to eat something different from what I prepare, they are responsible for (a) buying the food they want, (b) finding a place to store the food they want that does not interfere with MY food storage, (c) learning how to cook the food they want because I don't have the time to do it for them and MOST IMPORTANTLY(d) cleaning up after themselves when they cook.
When I've cleaned up the kitchen, then gone to bed early so I can wake up at 5 am and go to work, if I see a mess in my kitchen when I go in there at 5 am to make my tea, they have been warned that there will be hell to pay - EVERYONE will be woken up at 5:01 am and will have to clean up their g-d effing messbefore I leave for work. It has only happened ONCE. The other thing is that when I enforced those boundaries, I soon found out who really had their heart in their dietary "commitment". It wasn't Mr Scully. The vegan-thing lasted about 3 weeks before he got sick and tired of going to the supermarket and buying their bean salad every day.
I don't know if there is a way to compromise with your son's new preferences - it's pretty simple with vegetarians - but the dairy/meat thing was pretty annoying when Mr Scully would question me about all that and then go into a rant about plant-based food. I told him I didn't want to talk about his new cult if he was going to be insulting of my cooking, and to stop b*tching about my cooking and put on a effing apron and do it himself. Oh and the other thing I did was point out his hypocrisy in claiming that he wanted to be healthier regarding eating habits, but then having a pack-a-day habit.
Perhaps if you try to find out his motivation for the sudden change in eating preferences - maybe he has been influenced by animal rights activists or maybe he's simply trying to express his individuality and become more "separate" from his family of origin, kind of trying to make his own choices. One of my vegetarian teens became bored with being a vegetarian after about a year... she missed pork chops, of all things. LOL
