AIBU to be irritated by people who describe themselves as Vegetarian yet who happily eat fish!

[Housewife2010]

I know several friends & work colleagues who describe themselves as Vegetarian, but they eat fish. Why not just say that they don't eat meat? I didn't think that a fish was a plant!

me23 you are sweetly naive. But somewhat aggressive and unbalanced given the nature and tone of this AIBU

I don't need to lie to myself or anyone else. I am trying to explain that things aren't necessarily black and white.

Can you eat meat or fish? If you wanted to? I can't and I don't apart from what I have been honest about.

Did you eat meat and fish growing up for all those years? Red meat even? I didn't.

But I never preached to people about their consumption of animal flesh for those twenty five years before I managed a bit of chicken.

Or tried to castigate them when I wasn't sure of the facts.

I don't eat fish, poultry or mammals. I do think eating haddock is preferable to eating factory farmed chicken, because a haddock in the sea had a decent quality of life prior to death. I am sure there may be other reasons why people eat fish rather chicken. I also think eating pretty much anything is preferable to eating pork, because of the intelligence of pigs. I am sure other people think differently and may choose certain species that they have particular ethical issues with. Religious people may describe themselves as vegetarian because it is less complex than explaining that they eat some meat but not beef/hare/pork or whatever.

I don't really care what someone else does or does not eat. If I inform someone that I am a vegetarian I am not suggesting that I am morally superior to them. I also do not feel that simply because I am vegetarian I have to be perfect in every moral aspect of my life. It is not as if the only choices are complete perfection or giving up altogether on even trying.

If someone is against factory farming and doesn't eat a chicken but does eat a packet of Haribo, so what? It is better than eating both the chicken and the Haribo. And why do any of you even care about someone else's moral dilemmas? They are not stopping you from eating whatever you like.

I am genuinely perplexed as to why people care about other people's diets.

Not me actually, milliemoosmum.Am quite militant about that. Can't stand walking/sitting/wearing dead animal flesh and thinking 'a pig should be here instead'

Milady, I have friends like you, who just explain that they don't like meat. They will eat it if served it but dont buy it themselves, but still, they don't call themselves vegetarians. Are you trying to argue that you are? Don't really understand

YANBU

For the reason below and all the others in the same vein!!!

notimetoshop yanbu - they can say they are vegetarian. but they aren't - and then real veggies get served fish because ' oh i thought you'd eat it'. NO.YANBU

If you eat fish or chicken, please STOP calling yourself vegetarian, you are confusing the world at large and us real veggis are suffering because of it. Just say you don't eat most kinds of meat - it's not difficult!

bicnod you do realise fish are caught in trawling nets don't you?? They aren't questioned when hauled onto the deck if they'd prefer to go back in...

Read it back, BPB, pal, I said "I describe myself as a "vegetarian" because it's easier.

That way I don't get served grim fish.

Read my later posts. I eat fish and chicken maybe twice a year. Loads of "vegetarians" fall off the wagon more frequently than that.

"People who eat meat are not vegetarian". Not rocket surgery, no, I agree with you.

But fowl and fish are not defined popularly as "meat". They are flesh. If you want to be precise, be precise. People who eat flesh are not vegetarian perhaps.

I just say 'I don't eat meat' or 'Put me down for the veggie option'.

I went vegetarian in the early 80s, as a young teenager. If I were deciding now, tbh, I'd probably feel I could be more effective in influencing farm animals' welfare by continuing to eat meat, but being bloody fussy about its provenance.

Again - it seemed OK to me to eat fish, back then, because AFAIK it wasn't being kept in some horrible concrete crate full of shit. Hmm. So now I don't eat farmed salmon.

So, if you slapped a big juicy steak down in front of me, having been on first name terms with its organically-reared & humanely-slaughtered provider, I'd have no ethical problems with eating it - I'd just feel sick at the prospect, given that I haven't eaten a chunk of dead cow in 25 years!

I suspect that 'vegetarian', 'pescatarian' etc are terms that are going to be less & less used, tbh, as people have more choice & more consumer power re: how their meat is produced.

& also as vegetarian meals become more & more mainstream - I don't think my dad had ever sat down to a meatless meal before his 50s; he now routinely cooks vegetable curries, or makes a veggie version of lasagne, & saves meat-eating for steaks & roasts.

The only place where I see it as a problem, is if you're a vegetarian captive audience eg. in hospital, & someone's trying to tell you that fish fingers are today's Vegetarian Choice. But anyone working in catering ought to make it their business to know better than this!

milady I didnt read your first post! I can see now that you can't eat meat not that you morally choose not to, I thought it was the former. That's why I thought it was silly saying you are veggie yet eat meat occasionally.
Apologies.

Well that's bollocks.

Any flesh of a mammal or bird is meat. Fish is fish.

Chicken is popularly defined as meat. WTF else is it?

Not much of a natural vegetarian if you eat fish and chips. I read it in full, and am agreeing with the OP that people like yourself who call themselves vegetarian and then pick the fish are irritating. Because they aren't. Which you know.
I can't actually see what you are arguing about. You can call yourself whatever you like, inaccurate as you like. The rest of us can be irritated by it.

GAH! I describe myself as a veggie because I do not willingly or by choice eat fish or chicken and certainly not no never any kind of red meat!

But because I can now stomach a bit of fish or white chicken people are saying that I shouldn't describe myself as a veggie!

What about the people who have given meat up after a whole lifetime / childhood of munching it? They are sodding saints apparently!

No. You are not, you giver-uppers of meat. I didn't eat a mouthful of flesh for thirty five years. Come back to me when you've done thirty and then you can say I'm a crap vegetarian.

You are arguing over pedantics - at least someone being pescatarian is sort of trying? It must be difficult with the whole 'I must eat meat' ideology. We are taught to eat meat as that is what most people in this country grow up with - it is a kind of subliminal brainwashing. Everyone else does it/it is 'traditional' therefore it must be right/we need meat to 'survive'/'god' gave us dominion over the animals, blah, blah, blah...

It comes down to a casual type of cruelty. Most people can't be bothered to think where their food comes from. As long as it is there and they can go on with their daily dosage of TV, their next marketed meal, their next quest for eternal youth. Slaughter-house videos in primary school might deter some, but at the end of the day it just comes down to not giving a fuck about anything else but yourself and not thinking for yourself.

Not being of the intellectual type I can't give a prettified version. Instead Jeremy Bentham does it more graciously, "...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" (Bentham 1781). And suffer they can and do.

Sorry, I haven't read a lot of the posts, but YANBU. Of course people who eat fish aren't vegetarian.

They also shouldn't wear leather or use products tested on animals.

Actually - nobody should, in my opinion! :)

Well forgive me for eating the meat-heavy dish called fish and chips BPB.

Swimming with blood and bone and sinew it was. Just like a steak or a lamb chop.

Isn't it?

No.

When I was a child and it was only thing I could have when we were travelling as a family. I'd eat the batter. Meat-heavy batter it was, full of chewy flesh, yes? And the chips. Made from meat! Not potato.

From the tone of your post you'd think I describe myself as a veggie who orders a mixed fucking grill every week.

Pedantics is the point of the thread!

I don't get you at all. You do not willingly or by choice eat fish and chicken? Except when you pcik it off a menu or a christmas?

It hasn't got anything to do with value judgements. I couldn't give a flying fuck what you eat, and I'm no more a vegetarian than I am a prince. Its about lables, and a vegetarian is someone who does not eat ex-living creatures. Vegetarians don't eat fish.
You can't take a word and use it to mean whatever the hell you like.

I have been to the Vegetarian society and looked it up.

A vegetarian:

'does not eat any meat, poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crustacea, or slaughter by-products.'

So no pigs, chickens, Haribo or haddock.

But you can wear a fur coat and work as a scientist testing make-up on rabbits and still be a vegetarian, because vegetarianism is about diet, and may or may not be done for ethical reasons. Even if it is done for ethical reasons, it may be about global warming rather than the suffering of a cow.

Milady
By that reasoning someone who has recently started having the odd social cigarette is less of a smoker than someone who formerly was on 60 a day but has now given up completely. Out of the 2 who would be described as a smoker?

Oh yes you can if plenty of people do it and if it's in common usage and the meaning is conferred thus. Do you not know this?

Take the term, "text-speak".

It's incorrect. People don't speak in text.

It should be "text-type" but the consensus and usage have made it correct.

Similarly "vegetarian".

Many words are subjective and dependant on context. You're no scholar of the ever-living and growing language are you?

Yanbu.

That's a good analogy Housewife2010 and I agree with you. Finally some sense.

But if one of the smokers was attacking the other?

And I believe that alcoholics who haven't had a drink for 20 years still consider themselves problem drinkers...

I've got MA(Hons) In English Lit from a good university. Does that count?

Language does evolve, but if everyone invents their own individual meaning of words how can they expect others to understand what they mean?

Some words are subjective and dependent on context. Vegetarian is not one of them. It has a particular meaning.

You seem confused. Fish and chips is not a vegetarian meal. Its not a matter of relativity, it doesn't matter how meaty it is, there is not a spectrum.

I can tell you I am a non-smoker. But I do on occasion have a few ciggarettes. But I can still call myself a non-smoker because they're ultra-lights! I'd be talking shite though all the same, just like you are.

I wasn't talking about individual inventions though was I? Common usage was the phrase I used.

Anyway, when all the people on this thread who say I can't, purely for ease socially, not for any show-off bollocks reason, describe myself as a veggie because I have been known to eat fish or chicken twice a year, have done what I did and didn't eat any flesh for over thirty years then they can tell me about it.

Honestly I do wonder why I have been having to defend myself here. Maybe because I would like to be able to eat meat whereas the people who want to give it up are finding it difficult and are a bit jealous of my ability to reject it. Well it takes all sorts.

Congrats on your MA (Hons) by the way.

I'm talking shite am I BPB? Is that a personal attack?

Why are you so upset? Have a fag FGS. I'm going to!

People misusing the word vegetarian really winds me up. Because I am a vegetarian and it creates real trouble as some hosts/restauranteurs are misled into thinking 'vegetarian' = 'eats fish'.

If you want to eat fish, or only white meat, or only eat meat on Tuesdays standing on your head wearing pink knickers, find your own ruddy term. Don't pinch our perfectly serviceable useful and accurate term!

Yes! I use it because I don't eat fish or chicken in restaurants edam. I eat a slice of chicken breast at Christmas perhaps in my own home and some white fish when I have to.

Except on Tuesdays obviously.

Wearing pink knickers.

Oh fuck. Do you know me?