I was raised a Methodist, and think we didn’t do stuff because it was fun. When I joined up with Mrs. Plant’s outfit, I discovered we don’t so stuff because there are rules. She eats these fake bacon bit things on her salads. They are made out of soy beans and are Kosher. They look, smell and taste like bacon, but it’s ok to eat them because they aren’t bacon.
So cold yucky meatloaf breaks the rule, but a nice steamed lobster doesn’t.
Well, it does for me, dammit. 
I think your husband was making the same distinction restaurants do when it comes to animal flesh. Many restaurants, especially Chinese ones, divide their fare by type, and they distinguish meat (as in beef and pork) from fowl and seafood, even though all are technically meats. In such cases, “meat” is understood to be red meat.
You are correct that fish is a kind of meat, but meat isn’t just defined as generic animal flesh.
The irony is that if nobody had ever eaten real bacon due to the rules, Mrs. Plant would not have the pleasure of enjoying fake bacon. Thank Og for atheists, eh? 
Indeed.
Yep. If it walks, swims, flies, crawls, or locomotes in any way, shape, fashion or form under its own power, on land, in the sea or in the air, the flesh is meat.
A halibut? Meat.
A Chicken? Meat.
A Moose? Meat.
A Worm? Meat.
A Mantis? Meat.
If it does stuff, it’s meat.
This is rather like the argument above whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. It is not an either/or question, but rather a matter of the specific definition being employed at the time.
Botanically, tomatoes are fruits. In the culinary sense, tomatoes are vegetables. In fact, the tomato is both a fruit that is served as a vegetable, and a vegetable that is a kind of fruit. There is no actual conflict there.
Similarly, in a broad or scientific sense, all animal flesh may be regarded as meat. But of course, that is not the sense in which most people use the word.
In a culinary sense, “meat” refers to the flesh of mammals. Usually a distinction is made from that and the meats of birds, which is regarded as “poultry,” and fish and shellfish, regarded as “seafood.”
In Spanish the distinction is even more restrictive. All though carne means “meat” in a generic sense, in practice it means beef.
Since it was a cooking show, your husband was right and you were wrong. If it had been a show about biology, you perhaps might have had a point.
No, just a different kind of fish. 
Discussion of “red herrings” and that phrase from World Wide Words.
Oh, I agree that fish is meat. But what I was that it’s not meat in the Catholic Church. You can eat a big shrimp platter, but not leftover meatloaf on Fridays. And that’s fasting, somehow?
Doesn’t make sense.
Not “fasting”; abstinence from meat. Not quite the same thing. (As I understand it, IANACatholic, etc).
Of course fish is meat. Chicken is meat. Rattlesnake filet is meat. Frog legs is meat.
Chocolate covered ants… well, I sure wouldn’t serve them to a vegetarian. Yeah, meat.
But the question is what is the purpose behind no meat? IANC either, but fish and shellfish are ok, it may be because it has nothing to do with the reason a Catholic must abstain from meat.
Could the significance be that abstaining from meat represents a sacrifice by the normally meat-eating (and loving) populace? Cuz if you really, really wanted a burger, but you didn’t have one in the name of Jesus, then you really would be sacrificing something.
You’re right, I’m sorry-I should have said abstinence.
I call myself a pescatarian, but since most people aren’t familiar with the word, I have to explain it sometimes. I do not eat warm-blooded animal meat. I DO eat fish (also eggs and dairy.) Unless there’s a discussion about dietary specifics, though, I tend to say I’m a vegetarian, since that’s a word people know, and it describes the bulk of my diet. Or veg-aquarian, a word which I think my friend Jennie made up.
I’d say fish is meat. Since the reasons for my diet aren’t dictated by my ethics or religion, and I don’t have to answer to anyone else, I don’t normally get worked up over the question, though.
For me: meat = body parts
So fish is meat.
Unfertilized eggs (chicken menstrual cycle, essentially), milk, cheese, etc are not meat.
I agree with the above on the “non-meat” criteria list.
But basically for me: If it falls into the Animalia Kingdom, it’s Meat. As it’s an animal of SOME sort. I think it’s the simplest and easiest definition of Meat vs. Not Meat.
People have been debating this without anyone yet pointed out that this phrase is in itself a red herring, as it doesn’t actually contain the word “meat” in it.
Mark Bittman’s encyclopedic cookbook, How to Cook Everything, has chapters on fish, poultry, and meat. The meat chapter contains recipes for various bits of the bodies of mammals. The rabbit and hare recipes, though, are in the poultry chapter, because he says they cook very much like chicken (and says you can substitute chicken if you can’t get rabbit or hare or don’t want to cook with it). I have to take his word that it’s like chicken culinarily- I’ve never cooked or eaten rabbit or hare, and probably never will now that I keep kosher.
I can’t speak for the Catholics, but I can say there is no reason given in the Torah for the rules of keeping kosher. The “official” explanation (as far as there can be any such thing in Judaism- we don’t have any central authority like the Pope to keep us all doing and believing the same things) is that they’re rules given to us by God for reasons known only to God. Any explanation you’ve heard for why such-and-such isn’t kosher is 100% pure speculation. Since we don’t know the reasons for the kosher rules, all we can do is keep to the letter of the law- we don’t know what the spirit of the law was intended to be.
Interestingly enough, the Talmud says that, for every non-kosher food or combination of foods, there is a kosher equivalent that tastes the same or at least similar that is perfectly OK to eat. There’s a long Jewish tradition of stuff like kosher “bacon” bits.
Which would lead one to believe there were no lobsters in Babylonia or Jerusalem at the time.
You can get imitation crab or lobster made from pollock or other fish at kosher markets. It’s not that close to crab or lobster (I think suitably seasoned white fish such as sole can come closer), but it’s good.
I beg to differ, it’s fish. I hate fish, probably from the smell of cleaning aquariums.