Generally, but words mean what we use them to mean, and the same word is frequently used to mean different things.
I had a friend who would eat wild-caught fish and game but not farmed animals, his rationale being that he was concerned about how animals lived, rather than about how they died. You may share his views or not, but it does look like a perfectly cromulent ethical position. But in circumstances where explaining this would have been more detail than was required, he would often simply slot himself into the “vegetarian” category, since this would mean he was not offered food that was problematic for him.
So, yeah, not everyone who is “vegetarian” is as necessarily vegetarian as we might expect. But our expectations are mostly our problem, not theirs.
I’ve been a pretty straight-up vegetarian for 30 years (except for a brief stretch during basic training when field chow was my only option, and I was burning 4000 calories a day). Anyway. I know lots of vegetarians and vegans. The rule is “Nothing with a face.” Or, I would add, any kind or neurological system & vascular system, however primitive.
It means that for the vegetarian who chooses to eat eggs and dairy, FERTILIZED eggs are out. So is cheese with rennet. We also prefer cruelty-free eggs and dairy, so we like them to come from free-range animals.
We also don’t wear leather, or use items form animals when it is not necessary, or an alternative of it is. A doctor offered me a medication once, and it was in capsule; it was the timed-release version. The capsules had gelatin. I found that the non-timed release worked just as well, but you hut you had to remember to take them every two hours, and wake up at night to take one.
Anyone that’s a vegetarian for moral reasons should stick to eating only fruit. By eating fruit you are generally helping the plant, while the eating of other parts is likely to harm it. What does having a face or advanced neurological system matter? That’s not about morality, that’s about things that creep you out.
For bonus points, once done eating, bury your apple cores in fertile ground not too close to any other trees.
As if we need another term for omnivore. What do you call a virgin who is flexible enough to have sex from time to time? Or, the smoker who says: * Quitting is easy. I’ve done it dozens of times.*
If you define “face” to mean “mouth, nose, and two eyes”, then birds don’t have faces because a beak isn’t the same as a nose and a mouth. Therefore, one can eat birds and still say “I never eat anything with a face”.
As I see it, everyone has a line they draw of what they will eat and what they won’t. Most Americans draw that line with cows and pigs on one side of the line but horses, cats, and dogs, on the other side of the line. Myself, I draw the line with mammals on one side and non-mammals on the other. I usually say “I don’t eat beef or pork”, but if someone asks me “Are you a vegetarian?”, I often find it’s easier to just say “yes” rather than go into an explanation.
FWIW, Spider Robinson once wrote that a chicken is “such a pathetically stupid animal that vegetarians eat them with a clear conscience.” On a related note, there’s a scene in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Wikipedia where Prof (a self-described vegetarian) eats ham by pretending that it’s pink salmon.
Surely you aren’t suggesting that “vegetarian” should only apply to people who have never eaten meat, are you? That’s the analogy with “virgin”. And exactly how long does someone have to refrain from smoking before you would allow them to use the label “non-smoker”? One week? One month? One year? One decade? A closer analogy would be what would you call a person who never smokes cigarettes (or tobacco in any form) but occasionally smokes marijuana? Would you object to such a person calling themselves a non-smoker?
That’s a bit silly, but it does bring to mind that certain animals like oysters legitimately don’t have a face. A strict vegetarian wouldn’t eat any dead animals. But a lot of vegetarians are not 100%. Pescetarians eat fish; I don’t think there’s a special word for people who eat certain invertebrates.
I’ve known a lot of people who don’t eat mammals but do eat other animals.I imagine they often check the “vegetarian” box because it’s easier than explaining.
Fortunately, most cheese made these days doesn’t involve real rennet. Something like 90% of cheese is made with fermentation-produced chymosin, where they’ve taken the genes for rennet enzymes and put them into fungi or bacteria. However, there’s still some made with real rennet, so you may want to do some research if this matters to you
I try not to use a term, but it might be easier. I choose not to eat red meat for a variety of reasons (too fatty, colon cancer avoidance, don’t really like it to begin with) but it sounds so pretentious to explain that, “oh I don’t eat red meat,” if someone offers me a cheeseburger or something. It swings the other way too. I’ve never claimed to be vegetarian, and I never would, but people who are familiar with my dietary habits refer to me that way all the time.
Surely you’re not saying that it’s ok for a vegetarian to eat food that involves killing poor defenseless fungi?? Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants are. Stop the mycocide!
Omnivore is not a choice. It’s a biological fact. Humans are omnivores whether we choose to eat meat or not. Likewise, choosing to eat only plants does not make one an herbivore, nor does choosing to eat only meat make one a carnivore.
