Former Catholic, and of course fish is meat - it’s not a vegetable.
Just like tomatoes are fruit because they have seeds.
I don’t mind referring to meat and fish separately, as long as you don’t call yourself a vegetarian when you eat fish.
guestchaz got the quote wrong, anyway. Swanson says “Fish meat is practically a vegetable,” not “Fish is practically a vegetable.” In other words, he considers fish to be meat. He just thinks it’s close to the threshold of non-meat (a view which some vegetarians share).
I was raised Catholic and aware of the Lenten requirements but I always considered fish to be meat. I just figured it was one of those wacky church things like calling a cracker “the body of Christ.” No shortage of that kind of stuff and like Chronos said, totally irrelevant outside of some very specific contexts.
Yeah I know, but at the same time, it’s vaguely familiar, I’ve heard it or something very similar espoused somewhere, by someone else before, but the specifics escape me. Probably will come to me as I’m driving to work 3 weeks from now.
Vegans won’t eat it, so in that sense it’s meat.
Jews who keep kosher will eat it with dairy, so in that sense it’s not meat.
I remembered the day getting the dispensation as St. Joseph’s Day, March 19. At least it was Joe 19 in my diocese (Cleveland) circa 1968.
Everyone who says fish is meat must never have heard of the kosher laws not allowing combining meat with dairy products as it applies to bagels, cream cheese and lox.
I don’t use jewish dietary law as a basis for my worldview.
I had an Indian friend in college who said some Indians who weren’t supposed to eat meat referred to fish as “water vegetables”. I imagine that was a joke, too, but represented a common way in which the dietary rules were broken.
The Jewish dietary laws would be another specialized context where fish is not meat.
And it’s not uncommon for both St. Joseph’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day to get dispensations on the no-meat rule. St. Joseph’s probably occurs in more dioceses, since he’s an important saint for the whole church, not just important for one subculture, but that subculture is highly represented in American Catholicism.
The thing is “meat” has several definitions.
Scientifically: fish is meat.
Culinary: fish is not meat.
Religious: fish is usually not meat.
Like the tomato.
Scientifically it’s a fruit …of a vegetable.
Culinary it’s a vegetable. (altho sometimes cherry tomatoes are eaten like fruits).
PETA’s sea kittens notwithstanding, I think that morally speaking, a lot of people see fish as “almost vegetables”. Mammals and birds exhibit a clear and identifiable pain response, and are clearly intelligent. Fish, not so much. If you’re going to eat an animal, it may as well be a dumb one. I don’t see a problem with this reasoning–in fact I respect it more than the vegan approach of giving all animals equal moral weight.
^Thank you!
Not so different from the French and their “sea fruits” (i.e., shellfish).
Thinking in terms of commerce, the regulations of which it was their job to adjudicate, while they would have no jurisdiction over scientific fact per se. Tomatoes are classed with vegetables commercially because of how they’re used. You just don’t find tomato in fruit salads, fruit tarts, or any context known as “fruit.” Nobody combines tomatoes with apples or peaches in a dish.
However, it’s totally plausible to make a ratatouille-like dish comprising tomatoes, chili peppers, bell peppers, eggplant, zucchini, and green beans. All fruits. Fruits all. I’m just sayin.
On the other hand, my mom makes a wonderful tomato jam.
Ah yes, that explains why there aren’t plank roasted fish steaks, fish meatballs, nor fish burgers. :dubious:
So far as I can tell, fish is treated exactly like any other meat, when it comes to culinary preparation.
I seem to recall this being a tax issue … fruits were taxed and vegetables were not … so tomato growers got their fruit legally classified as vegetable. Botanically, it’s a berry … enjoy [smile]
Actually, the tax issue was exactly the other way around, as referenced in this thread under Nix v. Hedden. Somebody tried to classify the tomato as a fruit for tax purposes/to get around vegetable tariffs, but the Court ruled that for US Customs purposes it is to be classified as a vegetable, going by the common meaning of the term, not the botanical meaning. Just like with the aforementioned peppers, peas, beans, squashes, etc., which are also botanical fruits, but commonly and culinarily treated as vegetables.
I giggled when I heard the joke “The Catholic Church is a 2,000 year search for loopholes in the Bible.”
I don’t think the *“fish are not meat in the same way that tomatoes aren’t vegetables” *comparison is a good one.
A better analogy would be if someone claimed that tomatoes aren’t even plants at all.
Re: Fruit v vegetable
Fruit is both a botanical and a dietary term, but vegetable is not. There is no botanical definition of vegetable. So, the tomato is a botanical fruit and a dietary vegetable
I do when it comes to bagels.
So why do so many vegetarians think fish is not meat? Because it’s not a land animal? Because it has no legs? That’s always baffled me.