A Muslim friend of mine turned down chocolates that I offered.
He told me that his parents told him not to accept food offered by non-Muslims, as it would be haram. Why is this so?
Note: The chocolate does not contain any ingredients that would be considered haram.
I am Muslim and I have many non-muslim friends in my college and also during my school life. During the lunch break, we share our food with each other food, they don't hesitate to take a bite from my lunch box and neither I even when they are pure vegetarian (Don't even eat eggs).
Yes, that's right that we should have to be careful while eating meat offered from someone because the meat may be haram as @Mohammadhp says.
So maybe your friend actually doesn't know about Islam or maybe he has been given the wrong information.
If the food offered is permitted to eat, It doesn't matter who is offering ,cooking or serving. The only reason, Muslims would avoid any offered food is that, there is a high chance of contamination which may change the food into not permitted food. If you let them know clearly what you are going to offer them in food, they would never reject the permitted food from anyone.
This is not completely true, although muslims generally do not eat meat or any kind of animal products offered by non muslims because the animal should be killed in a particular ceremony for its meat to be considered halal, meaning that you can eat it (i don't want to get into the details of the ceremony), otherwise consuming that meat is prohibited for muslims.
