From the “Survivor II” website, bio of Kimmi Kappenberg:
(Kimmi was the Kucha tribe member who was all squeamish when her tribe won the chickens and decided to eat then instead of keeping them to make eggs. She further freaked out when Michael killed a wild boar for its meat.)
Why is seafood often the exclusion to a vegetarian’s no-animal policy?
Kimmi’s bio says she won’t eat “land-dwelling animals”. Is this being rather hypocritical? “I’ll only eat things that I’m x-amount evolved above.”? Is it a cruelty issue? (Isn’t beheading, done right, less cruel than pulling out of the water by a hook in the mouth and letting asphyxiate and dehydrate to death?)
But seriously, the concise term for her variety is “pesco-vegetarian”. I didn’t get anywhere looking for a rationale for why this particular variation is a good choice. The best I could find was that it was a good stepping stone between eating only chicken and fish and not eating any meat at all. But an awful lot of the “real” vegetarians aren’t impressed and are kind of ticked that these people even use the word vegetarian. Bit of a schism actually.
My girlfriend is “vegetarian” who eats fish. She doesn’t call herself a vegetarian though. She will say, if pressed, that she doesn’t eat meat. Her reason for this choice is that she feels the animals in the American meat and poultry industries are treated cruelly from cradle to grave, and she doesn’t wish to support these industries. I agree with her to some extent (about the animals being mistreated), but I’m not about to stop eating meat. I don’t know what Kimmi’s reasoning is about her choice, but I would probably want to hear it from Kimmi’s mouth before I called her a hipocrit. I did see her on Politically Incorrect and she had a lot of negative things to say about the meat and poultry industries, so she may very well be of the same mind as my girlfriend.
Following from “Vegetarian Times” complete cookbook (hope this isn’t considered copyright material):
“Some people like to say you can’t be semi-vegetarian, because it’s like being a little bit pregnant: You either are or aren’t. But because we hear it all the time, we’ll give a stab at a definition. This term may refer to people who are vegetarian most of the time but occasionally eat fish, poultry or meat. Or it may describe people who eat fish and poultry regularly but skip meat. Theoretically, people who eat lots of vegetables could be called semi-vegetarians. (…) The person may be a crusto-vegetarian (eats shrimp, crab or other crustaceans), a mollo-vegetarian (eats clams, scallops, oysters or other mollusks)…”
I think a lot of vegetarians are OK with fish & seafood because they somehow feel that a fish is a “lower” form of animal than (e.g.) a cow (verging on GD here…) - that perhaps a fish doesn’t suffer like a cow does so it’s ok to eat the fish.
Here’s a FAQ for rec.food.veg that defines the different kinds of vegetarianism:
Well, IAAV, and I would never try to tell someone how or what they should eat, but I would have to say that Kimmi, whoever she is, is not a vegetarian. IMO. If she wants to eat fish, yay for her, I couldn’t care less, but she’s still not a vegetarian. It’s trendy to call yourself a vegetarian - even if you eat fish, or sometimes even chicken - but if it used to be a living, breathing animal, and you eat it, you aren’t a vegetarian. Again, IMO.
I agree with Kyla and the other descriptions already given (that it’s about factory farming and fishies are exempt). Also, a bit more on the schism pointed out by SmackFu…stuff like this gets tricky b/c if I, as vegetarian, tell someone like Kimmi that she can’t call herself a vegetarian (“yet,” if she’s moving in that direction) some combination of the following occurs:
I’m potentially turning someone off of vegetarianism by being specific: “Hey, you’re really a pescetarian!”
I’m opening myself up to criticism: “Yeah, but you eat eggs/cheese/potatoes/blood/semen, some vegetarian!”
Hi, Opal!
And all of them, except for the requisite #3 aren’t terribly fun/pleasant/desirable. Opal has a high likelihood of being all of those, but I’ll let her fan club weigh in…
I don’t think that I made my point quite clear enough.
My girlfriend doesn’t call herself a vegetarian, but other people often do. A typical conversation is as follows:
Party Host: There’s all kinds of burgers and dogs. Help yourself.
My Girlfriend: I don’t eat meat.
PH: You’re a vegetarian?
MG: No, I just don’t eat meat.
Later that day PH is speaking to someone else.
PH (Pointing to MG): She’s a vegetarian.
I don’t know if Kimmi refers to herself as a vegetarian. I can’t recall her doing so, but I could be wrong. She frequently would tell people that she doesn’t eat beef, or, chicken, or pork, etc. Just because the word “vegetarian” pops up in her survivor bio doesn’t make her a hipocrit for eating fish.
