The “fish meat is practically a vegetable” line is a joke from a TV situation comedy, spoken by a character who is notable for his hypermasculine views, habits, and lifestyle.
I was raised Catholic, but I cast off all Catholic modes of thinking long ago. Even when I was a young practicing Catholic, I thought the ruling of fish as not-meat to be patently absurd. It hardly mattered in a practical sense since they relaxed the restrictive dietary laws when I was still in third grade or so.
When very young, I grew up assuming that Friday got its name from frying fish. It was as obvious as the name of Arizona deriving from “arid zone.” Both wrong but, at a certain stage of learning, irresistible.
My mistake, it was a Friday during Lent but not Good Friday. I just had Good Friday on the mind while typing it. Regardless, it played out as described: you had a number of people expecting a corned beef dispensation that never came.
I didn’t bother mentioning exemptions,etc because I doubted that people were reading the thread for a lesson in Catholic doctrine besides the most basic.
Tomatoes have the honor of Nix v Hedden, a Supreme Court case that determined if they were a fruit or vegetable. For context, someone was trying to circumvent a vegetable tariff by arguing that tomatoes were actually fruit. According to the Supreme Court, they’re a vegetable.
In reality for most people, I assume that “tomatoes are really fruit” are just one of those things you learn from the “Amazing Facts!” section of kid’s books and hang on to like peanuts not being real nuts.
He’s just a little mixed up. It wasn’t Good Friday, it was just that St. Paddy’s day fell on a Friday during Lent. (Good Friday is a special case–you’re supposed to properly fast that day–you can look up the rules, they seem to change a little from time to time–not just abstain from meat.) I actually thought the dispensation had been granted (at least in certain localities), but I might be remembering wrong.
Yeah, here’s the story I remember. The cardinal at that time (we have a new one now, ETA: well, new archbishop) granted a dispensation if St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Friday during lent.
ETA: I didn’t see your last post, Jophiel in my previous reply. But in some places in the US – and I seem to remember you being from this area – the dispensation WAS granted. Perhaps it changed under Cupich.
Yeah, I’m from the Chicago area as well. You might be right though. I thought it was more recently than that but none of the recent St. Pat’s have fallen on a Friday so it’s possible that I’m just addled 
Nope. They respire, but they don’t breathe. Except lungfish and such.
According to Wikipedia both jellyfish and sponges are in the kingdom Animalia, so yes.
The other thing I don’t understand about the tomato debate is, why single out “fruits” as the supposed non-vegetables? You never see anyone saying “A carrot is a root, not a vegetable”, or “Spinach is a leaf, not a vegetable”. Vegetables are edible plant parts, or possibly edible plant parts that aren’t sweet enough to make into desserts, depending on definition. By either definition, some vegetables are fruits, some are roots, some are leaves, and some are stems, flowers, or other plant parts.
Hmm, hadn’t considered milk. Definitely an animal product but not very meaty. Both gelatin and blood would be in the same category.
Coconuts have meat. I’m assuming vegetarians can’t touch them.
The Jewish kosher laws have an interesting out that applies to gelatin. If, at any stage of processing, a product is such that even a dog won’t eat it, it ceases to be food, and its origin is thus irrelevant. Even if it is further processed such that it again becomes food, its prior history doesn’t count against it.
And that’s just how absurd this position is - “sponges are meat” is a ridiculous position to take.
The only way you can transform a product into something a dog won’t eat is to make it to big to fit into their mouth.
Or add a caustic substance to it. I don’t think that most dogs would chow down on some bleach, for example.
By this definition poop is food.
Just for a datapoint, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.
For many organisms, feces is food. Heck, rabbits eat their own poop because it needs two passes thru their digestive tract to extract sufficient nutrients for rabbits to survive.
And it’s good that something out there eats poop, or we’d be neck-deep in the stuff. 
Indeed fish is meat.
Might not stop some of them, and there are plenty of breeds with mouths bigger than those of humans.