You get a lot of different reactions when people find out you're vegetarian, but one of the most common is "so what do you eat?" The tone is never unfriendly, but usually a blend of curiosity and bewilderment at the idea of such high martyrdom. It's as though people genuinely struggle to imagine a meal without meat.

This reaction has always puzzled me. My eating habits are hardly a mystery. I eat vegetables, grains, legumes, rice, fruit, eggs, cereals, pasta, milk and cheese. The only things I don't eat are meat and seafood, which in the greater scheme of things don't account for most types of food available. Try a thought experiment where you imagine a meal with only meat or seafood - now that would be tough.

Being a vegetarian is not grounds for sainthood. With countless varieties of vegetables and herbs available, I've never felt that giving up meat involved deprivation. Quite the opposite, becoming vegetarian opened my eyes to the amazing diversity of vegetables and legumes, encouraged me to experiment with unfamiliar ingredients like quinoa and tempeh, and led me to discover non-Western European styles of cooking that are far less meat dependent. Given the abundance of vegetarian ingredients, I find it hard to understand how anyone could be at a loss to imagine what vegetarians eat.

But therein lies the nub of the "what do you eat?" attitude. Many people underestimate, or aren't aware of, the huge variety of vegetarian foods and tasty ways of preparing them. It's not logical given non-meat ingredients form the basis of a healthy diet and these ingredients far outnumber their meat and seafood counterparts - but perhaps this attitude is a by-product of affluent, time-poor Western societies where people are in the habit of basing meals around meat and relying on familiar "convenience" options for meals. Or perhaps it's a symptom of "meat and three veg" syndrome, where people struggle to see vegetables as anything other than an over-boiled, under-dressed accompaniment to steak.

Whatever the reason, and however well-intentioned, it's wrong to assume that vegetarians are the poor cousins of carnivores. On the contrary, the real tragedy is the poverty of imagination that prevents people from imagining what a healthy, delicious vegetarian meal looks like.