Never understood the idea that eating fish and/or poultry doesn’t count as meat.
I think the fish and birds would have an opinion on this matter!
Older definitions. Jewish dietary laws.
Have you tried Soylent?
Not just Jewish: I grew up Catholic in the 70s and 80s, and fish was completely acceptable during Lent on “meatless Fridays.”
But it is meat, whether a religion’s arbitrary rules say it is or not. If you’re eating fish, it’s still the flesh of a creature.
This is how I’ve always seen it. If someone says they’re a vegetarian, I assume they don’t eat the meat of any creature. When they add the qualifier “but I do eat fish” I think (but don’t say), “oh, so you’re a poseur”.
The purpose of my post was not to argue in favor of the exception.
I was replying to someone who found the distinction bizarre, not addressing the logic of it. I was explaining why, to some people, it may not be a bizarre distinction.
I was vegetarian for eight years, and vegaquarian for another 13. When I started my new job, my already low weight plunged until I was two pounds away from being too skinny to be a horse jockey (seriously, they have minimum weights, I was almost below it). I started eating meat for health reasons, and it worked.
Too well. I’m still a few pounds away from being overweight, but I could definitely afford to lose a good fifteen. But I’ve learned to cook meat, and I love cooking a good roast chicken or beef stew, and it’d be hard to go back.
Some day it’s likely I will, though. Other than tastiness, there’s really no good reason to keep eating meat, and plenty of good reasons to stop. When I have the energy and willpower to do so, I’m likely to return to the vegetarian fold.
When MayGirl was in preschool, a friend invited her over for a playdate, which we accepted. The mother informed me that they were vegetarians. Would that be a problem? Of course it wasn’t, but I also said that while I admired her choice, I couldn’t do it because I loved meat. She laughed and said that most people try to minimize the amount of meat they eat.
My family and I do love our meat. Going vegetarian would simply not happen here. But the kids often take vegetarian lunches (boiled eggs, apples, carrots, crackers) to school. Neither of them eat sandwiches at school. And we have done Meatless Monday, but that was more for financial rather than dietary reasons.
Doesn’t seem that reasonable.
Define “meat” and “animal”.
Look, in the past and to some religions, fish are not “animals” nor is their flesh meat. Are insects “meat”? How about worms? How about one celled organisms?
Even scientists have gone back and forth- Animal, Vegetable were the original two Kingdoms, then three (added Protista) then five, then six (and there is disagreement there, even* eight* Kingdoms are suggested by some). So even scientists disagree on what is and what is not a “animal”. There’s nothing crazy or weird by drawing the line at "cold blooded vs warm blooded’ with “warm blooded” being “animals”.
Note that The OT came long before Linnaeus. So, them using a outdated system is not surprising. In fact Linnaeus is now outdated.
And when non-faith based vegetarianism first was popularized in the early 20th century, fish were commonly included.
And of course, if you eat dairy or honey other vegetarians think you are a poseur.
A decade ago, I was a vegetarian for 9 months. I thought it would be healthier, and I bought the economic argument that growing all these vegetables just to feed them to cows and pigs was wasteful. It was not healthier, it turns out I just ate a lot of pasta, bread and cheese. And I don’t really buy the economic argument anymore either.
At the same time, we started feeding our dogs a raw-food diet, so our freezer was full of chicken necks and wings. One day, we ate a holiday dinner at my wife’s grandparents (whom we had neglected to tell we were vegetarians), and found the food – all of it – was filled with meat. We went ahead and ate it so as not to be rude, and then realized that it tasted great, and saving all that meat in the freezer for the dogs was a dumb idea, so we went back to eating meat. Not sure grandma ever found out we were vegetarians for a while there.
So clearly I could be a vegetarian, because I was once. But I don’t plan on going back to it unless out of necessity.
Yeah, that made it harder. It seemed as if not eating meat didn’t make any difference, if you were going to go on using animal products. And going full vegan is a really hard lifestyle choice that I wasn’t prepared to make. I didn’t even know any other vegetarians. After a while I started to feel like I was bailing out the ocean with a spoon, so I said fuck it.
I’ve no plans to, but of course I could go without if I had to.
Nope. I tried to go vegetarian in stages in the late 80s. I cut out animal meat, but still ate fish and other seafood, with an aim of subsequently stopping that. But I got so fed up of the lack of choice in restaurants that I abandoned it after 6 months.
I can’t. I tried for 6 months. It was horrible mentally. Physically I was fine. I finally broke down when I caught myself eyeing roadkill hungrily. No thanks. I’m barely grudgingly a herbivore instead of straight carnivore.
Sure. I went vegetarian for a year a few years back. It made absolutely no noticeable difference in my life (other than meal selection, obviously).
Of course, you can make any diet unhealthy by overeating a small set of foods.
Indeed. My grains tend toward the whole, and I like vegetables, so when I go vegetarian, it’s reasonably good for me. But the Cheetos-and-Coke vegetarian diet is astonishingly not very healthy.
I can’t do it. I’d resort to eating people if forced to go without meat.