Do not take food issues personally.
If someone can’t eat something, it’s not personal:
- It isn’t a rejection of your hospitality
- It isn’t an insult to your cooking skills
- It isn’t a comment on your health, your lifestyle, or your diet
It’s also not any of your business:
- Don’t expect an intimate conversation about the reasons behind the food restriction
- Don’t make a big deal about it
- Do not comment about weight loss
- Do not offer unsolicited medical advice
- Do not offer unsolicited health advice
- Or unsolicited religious commentary
- Or your views on vegetarianism
And especially, don’t do dangerous things:
- Don’t try to trick people into eating things
- Even if you think their food issue is a ridiculous phobia and that tricking them would cure it
- Seriously, seriously, don’t do that
- It won’t help, and this kind of thing can and does kill people
- And, in any case, irrational people also have the right to say no
You do not need to agree that the person is correct about what to eat in order to interact with them respectfully. You just have to arrange for it to be possible for them to be in spaces you’re in, and for it to be predictable whether there will be anything for them to eat there.