Because often, in their religion, their ethos, it’s not.
As a vegetarian I’m baffled when people ask me if I eat fish. Then they give a confused look when I say I don’t. “So you’re vegan?” usually follows.
I don’t understand how the concept of not eating animals is so hard for some to understand.
To many fish are not animals. Not everyone is a scientist and the scientific definition is not the only right one.
When vegetarianism first became popular in the West, fish was included.
The vegans would have it that you’re not a vegetarian either, if you consume any animal products.
In my experience, most vegetarians I know do not eat fish. In fact, I would say none of the vegetarians I know eat fish (and I know a reasonable amount.) If someone does eat fish but is otherwise vegetarian, they usually say, “I’m mostly vegetarian, except I also eat fish” or something to that effect. The default assumption for vegetarians is they do not eat fish.
My experience is the opposite. Most I’ve known do eat fish and consider themselves complete vegetarians. Maybe it’s a thing over here.
The french expression “fruits de mer” refers to seafood, so perhaps other cultures consider fish to be fruit rather than animals, at least in a poetic sense.
Heh. I think in that sense “fruits” has a meaning akin to “harvest”.
I’ve had a fresh and smoked fish salad in a French joint that was listed as “Salade de la mer”. Doesn’t mean the fish is a veggie.
ETA: see, “fruit of my loins”.
According to the Tuna Bro, “That is still good meat on that fuckin’ fish, bro.”
Yeah, but again, coconuts have meat. Maybe they think it’s the same with fish, just meat in a different sense.
A vegetarian does not eat the flesh of any animal. A pescetarian eats fish, but not land animals. A vegan does not eat any animal products.
And I’ve known a few people who have described themselves as vegetarians but who do eat fish (or in some cases, other meat), but that’s just because they’ve gotten tired of explaining precisely what their limits are, and they know that anything acceptable to vegetarians is acceptable to them. One fellow, for instance, would not eat any commercially-processed meat, but would eat hunted meat.
- Sez who? Other than the Vegetarian Society. wiki: Those with diets containing fish or poultry may define meat only as mammalian flesh and may identify with vegetarianism.[9][10] A pescetarian diet has been described as “fish but no other meat”.[11] The common use association between such diets and vegetarianism has led vegetarian groups such as the Vegetarian Society to state that diets containing these ingredients are not vegetarian, due to fish and birds being animals.[12]
See the definition of “Vegetarian” is “eats no meat” and the whole point of this thread is that “meat” has different definitions.
- Except millions of tiny ones.
While “meat” has different definitions, I still consider it perfectly reasonable to assume that a vegetarian would avoid all flesh of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, finned fish and shellfish.
I’m more than willing to accept an individual vegetarian’s own exceptions, be they shellfish or poultry or whatever.
But anyone declaring themselves to be a vegetarian should not get upset when that declaration is interpreted as not eating what the majority of the population, and most vegetarians themselves, consider to be ‘meat’.
:dubious: I find that claim extremely hard to believe. Maybe you can find a handful who could think that (because you can find people who would think anything) but many? No.
I do, too, [find the claim hard to believe] but it seems to be a not uncommon misperception, at least according to that article. While I put “meat” and “fish” in two separate categories for cooking and stuff like that, I can’t imagine not classifying it as an animal.
I vote no, while accepting that fish are animals and have muscles.
No one will hear “let’s have some meat” and imagine fish, prawn, wood lice, or such things. You imagine mammals (usually beef or mutton) and maybe some fowl if added to meat.
The wonder of polysemy.
What are they, plants?
Reptile meat is meat isn’t it? Crocodile, Snake? If not meat what is it?
Poultry are domesticated birds like chickens, what about game birds like wild duck? Emu or Ostrich? Geese?
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
To many fish are not animals.
[/QUOTE]
It’s the internet. 50/50 chance he meant “Too many fish are not animals.”
Reminds me of “pommes du terre”, literally “apples of the earth”, the French term for potatoes. They ain’t really apples or even fruits, but, yeah, it makes sense to call them that, I guess.
Going back to the philosophical question, “Are fish self-aware, or are they merely meat robots?” If we decide they aren’t conscious but are instead mere biological machines, but if we also decide fish is not meat, then fill in the blank: Fish are _______ robots.
You’d be hard-put to look at an ostrich steak and say it wasn’t meat. It’s nothing like chicken,. It’s much more like lean beef or venison than anything else, rich and gamey.
On the other hand, those ostriches are domesticates, not game birds. But I’ve never heard them called poultry 