ani90

The operational word is think. It all depends on what the crew think as opposed to a more objective metric. The same way the FA can deboard a passenger if they think the passenger is a risk. Very likely the treshold for safety and 'thinking' it is unsafe varies from airline to airline, pilot to pilot, and FA to FA. I have seen the opposite where FAs have continued meal service in moderate turbulence, holding on to things to stop being thrown to the side, rest of us belted up and I wondered should they not be cancelling the meal service for their safety. There will be some over zealous purser that cancels service at the slightest excuse and there will be the stubborn ones that see it as a slight if they do, then there are those in between.

Ability to cancel meals is a form of power and authority crew have over passengers and seems to me that the OP's crew were quite happy to wield that power. Some FAs are not and even if they have to would do so apologetically and offer some consolation. And some times the decision is wrong but few of these power seekers are modest enough to admit they (for whatever reason) got it wrong so they may choose to see it through regardless of what transpires subsequently. A simple announcement prelanding that the turbulence did not turn out bad as we projected and sorry you missed your meal service, but we had made the decision to safeguard safety would have gone a long way to appease the passengers.