Deciphering Airline Veggie Meals Is Eggs-acting Science

I have a bone to pick, if that’s legal for a vegetarian.

I am often uncomfortable with the discomfort my meatless, eggless diet causes in others, particularly those who insist on drawing me into a spiritual discourse on the consequences of carnivorousness over a salad (mine) and ribs (not mine), and then wonder where their appetite went. I mean, shut up and eat. Diet is pretty much a personal matter.

But when I’m strapped inside a hurtling airborne cinema-pub with 250 other whiner-diners and a small crew of fully deputized stewards, it’s someone else’s business, of course. As if airlines don’t have enough to worry about.

The problem is: eggs.

Of course, the major carriers have come a long way--both in what their reservations agents are trained to know about special diets requested over the phone by passengers, whether for medical or religious reasons, and--especially--in what they then actually serve on board.

The issue, for me, is that eggs are not a dairy product--although millions of people, many of whom apparently take airline reservations over the phone, are not quite sure about this. Like a few million Hindus and many others who attend less formal Karma-Enders classes, I am a lacto-vegetarian, meaning I consume milk, yogurt, cheese (if it’s not curdled with animal rennet, but don’t get me started on that) and other dairy products. And I eschew eggs for the same reason I try to avoid having the lives of other edible animals filed away with my account number on them. (Simplified: Milk is produced to feed offspring; eggs are produced to, like, be offspring.)

So when I make a reservation, I request a “vegetarian” meal--and the adventure of air travel starts before I’ve packed a bag.

On the phone with British Airways, my choices, the agent says, are “lacto-vegetarian, strict vegetarian or Asian vegetarian.” Does the lacto-vegetarian meal use eggs or egg products? “Gee, I don’t know,” she says, “let me check.”

There is silence on hold, a nice touch. “Yes, it has eggs in it,” she says. Shouldn’t that be called a “lacto-ovo vegetarian” meal, then? Well, yes, it probably should--and, so, your choice, sir? Well, “strict vegetarian” is a “vegan” meal--no animal-related produce whatsoever, no eggs, no milk, no honey. I’ve had it before, and it invariably comes with a rice cake, as fine a flotation device as I’ve ever eaten. I order the Asian vegetarian, which the agent (after checking) pronounces egg-free.

It turns out to be an Indian meal, and probably the best meal I’ve ever had on an airplane. And to think I almost ordered what the BA telephone agents repeatedly call “lacto-vegetarian” when they mean “lacto-ovo vegetarian.” (BA flights also often offer a “vegetarian” selection on their economy class “menu.” It is almost always a lacto-ovo vegetarian meal.)

(Later, a BA spokesman says the airline knows lacto from ovo, and even faxes me a copy of the in-house meal guide, which clearly states the differences between lacto, lacto-ovo and vegan-vegetarian meals. As far as he knows, the book is available to all reservations agents.)

At United, my choices are “Indian vegetarian, Asian vegetarian, strict vegetarian and vegetarian with dairy products.” When I ask if the “vegetarian with dairy products” includes eggs, the agent admits that United will have introduced several new special meals by then, and has to check.

Yes, it contains eggs. The Asian vegetarian contains no eggs, no dairy and no honey, the strict vegetarian is a vegan meal, and the Indian vegetarian . . .

“The Indian vegetarian is new,” she says, “but I can ask a supervisor.” After a long hold pause, she tells me that her supervisor says the Indian vegetarian doesn’t include any eggs, “but he’s tried it, and he says it wasn’t very good, and he doesn’t recommend it.”

On the phone, a Virgin Atlantic agent lists my choices as “vegan--no dairy, no eggs” or “lacto-vegetarian, which would include dairy or egg products.” A Continental agent calls the same two choices “vegetarian-strict” and “vegetarian/dairy, which means eggs are OK.”

Only American Airlines, over the phone, is clear right out of the box: I can request either a “nondairy vegetarian” or “lacto-ovo vegetarian” meal. Period. I, of course, request neither--because the fare, at $1,000, is $300 more than the one quoted earlier by the airline that, last time, served my nondairy vegetarian meal to a diabetic, and vice versa. But I am optimistic.

Piantadosi is an editor and writer for the Post Travel section. Times Travel Writer Christopher Reynolds is on assignment.