Pescetarianism

Pescetarianism (also known as pescevegetarianism or pesco-vegetarianism) is a dietary choice, in which a person — known as a pescetarian — will not eat the flesh of any animals other than fish or other types of seafood: they may or may not also exclude other animal products like eggs and dairy from their diet. The Vegetarian Society does not accept it as a type of vegetarian diet although it has strong similarities to a traditional Mediterranean diet. Pescetarianism is the chosen diet of some people for various reasons, most commonly cited are health benefits.

Reasons for choosing a pescetarian diet

Health benefits

One of the most commonly cited reasons is that of health, based on findings that red meat is detrimental to health in many cases due to non-lean red meats containing high amounts of saturated fats. Furthermore, eating certain kinds of fish raises HDL levels, and some fish are a convenient source of omega-3 fatty acids, and have numerous health benefits in one food variety. Some health websites also state that pescetarianism lifestyle is a more healthy diet than vegetarian and vegan ones.

It can be claimed conversely that fish also contain toxins such as mercury and PCBs, though a careful selection of fish can ensure a low-risk or toxin-free product.

Ethics

For some the rationale is ethics: believing that either the treatment, or simply the killing and eating, of mass market "meat" mammals is unethical. The rationalization for eating fish is usually that pescetarians feel significantly less moral attachment to non-land creatures. Other ethical reasoning includes the following: "fish cannot feel pain and therefore cannot be treated cruelly or exploited," "fish are less intelligent than other animals," "fish are not mistreated in the same way that factory farmed animals are" or "hooked/netted fish do not suffer as much as land animals that are shot in the wild." Many of these ethical reasons are disputed.

There is also the belief that the predator-prey relationship between man and animals is part of the "natural order of things" and that, therefore, hunting animals from their own habitat for food is acceptable (as opposed to farming them in an artificial one).

Some pescetarians view red meat as an inefficient food source. Most cattle, pork and chickens that supply the United States meat market are not free range. Instead, they are fed grains that are grown for the sole purpose of animal feed. The amount of calories in the grain needed to feed a cow, pig, or chicken (to a lesser extent) greatly exceeds the nutritional value of the meat these animals provide. Were this grain to be used for human consumption instead, far more food could be provided. Considerations of overpopulation and the restricted amount of arable land usually play a role in this pescetarian rationale. This view is complicated by the fact that farming carnivorous fish species requires large inputs of wild fish for feed. Demand for "wild caught" fish may reflect this concern as well as a broader ethical position of rejecting the farming of animals, and the perceived health benefit of avoiding farmed varieties of some species such as salmon. Many pescetarians therefore choose only wild caught fish, or use guides such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood WATCH to evaluate the practices of fisheries.

A 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that livestock are responsible for roughly 18 percent of the global warming effect, outstripping even the contribution of transportation. The main greenhouse gases produced by livestock are methane — the natural result of bovine digestion — and the nitrogen emitted by manure. Furthermore, the deforestation needed for grazing lands also contributes to global warming, by eliminating the CO₂ sinks that forests provide. Thus some pescetarians choose their diet in an attempt to reduce "livestock's long shadow."

Comparisons to other diets

While pescetarians and vegetarians often cite similar reasons in selecting their dietary choices, they are separate diets. Vegetarians do not consume the flesh of any animal, including sea animals, making a clear distinction between the two diets. However, since pescetarians still choose to cut out certain types of meat from their diet, they experience many of the same social pressures as vegetarians, resulting in a sense of camaraderie between the two separate groups. The relationship between the two groups has resulted in substituting terms such as pesco-vegetarian and semi-vegetarian for pescetarian.

While both groups often cite environmental issues as a rationale behind their diets, pescetarian and vegetarian diets can be each environmentally unfriendly if precautions are not taken, due to the problems of overfishing, by-catch and in both diets, habitat destruction through arable farming. For this reason, some pescetarians focus on eating species that are most sustainably fished and avoid many farmed fish (e.g. salmon).

Terminology

The root of pesco- is ultimately from piscis the Latin for fish. However, the vowel e suggests that it has been taken via other Romance languages such as Spanish (pescado) or Italian (pesce). The reason for this seems obvious to English speakers - if they were called piscatarians people might get the wrong idea!

As of August 2004, "pescatarian," "pescotarian," and "piscatarian" could be found on the Internet, but "pescetarian" was perhaps the most popular (while Italian pesce is pronounced /ˈpeˌʃe/ , the English term is usually pronounced with a hard "c.") As of May 2007, the term "pectarian" could also be found on the Internet. "Pescavore" is also quite common, formed by analogy with "carnivore" (though the more regular word piscivore already existed). Less commonly used terms found include "aquatarian," which has recently gained popularity in Washington, DC, and "fishetarian," which was used in print as early as 1992, and "vegequarian."

External links

• What is a pescetarian?
• Pescetarian Life