Fish. “Fish isn’t meat so I thought it was okay.”
i was JUST asked at a recent gathering (that had only animal products for food) if i “still eat fish” and was met with shock when i said no. do people genuinely think fish aren’t living beings or something?
I think it has to do with traditional (religious? catholics) categorization of flesh into meat, poultry, and fish. they think “animals” means “meat”
This happens so often in Japan, they’ll also avoid marking fish as an allergen warning in food, even though they’ll list things like dairy, meat, eggs, and even soy.
I have a running joke with friends where I’ll always ask if some food has fish in it (i.e. pick up an apple and say “does this have fish in it?”)
That would literally kill me (well, probably actually just sent me to the hospital).
I thought, when I first went vegetarian (vegan now) years ago, that I wouldn’t need to specify ‘no fish’ when I ordered food labeled ‘vegetarian’. But Fish sauce or Oyster sauce has sent me to the hospital at least once.
I no don’t really eat out ever anymore, as I don’t feel like gambling on the 1% cross contamination chart (got several other allergies too), but its crazy to me that food labeled as vegetarian is allowed to have fish sauce in it.
I know a guy that proudly calls himself “vegetarian” and eats fish and shrimp. Like pescatarian is a thing, homie. Why bother pretending? It wouldn’t bug me so much but last time we at at a thing together he was proudly proclaiming to someone that he was vegetarian as he ordered a salmon dish.
I had a coworker like that! His going away meal was sushi lmao.
When asked why he didn’t say pescetarian he said he just didn’t like the word (?). Whatever the hell that means. Guess he wanted some kind of vegetarian street cred lol.
My uncle used to be vegetarian, but ate fish. He is a catholic. What’s up with that?
Catholics are obligated to not eat “meat” on Ash Wednesday and Fridays during Lent. However, when used by Catholics, the term “meat” doesn’t encompass fish. I remember being taught this, and I asked my grandmother, “But isn’t fish a form of meat?” She then showed me a page from an explicitly Catholic glossary that defined “meat” as flesh that comes from land animals specifically, so it didn’t include seafood at all. It’s silly as hell to me that an animal living underwater somehow negates the “meat” property from its flesh when you consume it.
