I met someone the other day who admonished my meat eating behaviour, yet called themselves an aquatarian (i.e. a seafood eating ‘vegetarian’). He was on his high horse about it.

now, dont eat meat if you are morally opposed to it, fair enough, but isnt seafood alive too? or as long as you dont eat mammals is that ok? what about ecological destruction through overfishing?

whats the argument that supports it? he was a bit of an idiot and couldnt put it forward.

There is a special word for vegetarians who eat fish/seafood:

“Hypocrite”.

there isnt one…he’s just a knob 😉

The guy sounds like a complete idiot.

I don’t eat meat but I do eat fish. I don’t call myself a ‘vegetarian’ nor do I call myself a ‘aquatarian’ – which I’ve never heard of before.

I call myself ‘someone who doesn’t eat meat’. I don’t have any moral objections to eating meat as long as no cruelty is involved, in the same way that I will eat free-range eggs but catergorically refuse to eat battery eggs.

I don’t think that there can be a moral argument which supports ‘aquatarian’ diet anymore than there can be a moral argument which supports eating rabbit but not eating guinea pig, or cow but not horse, or pig but not dog, or chicken but not parrot.

At the end of the day it’s about ‘choice’ and it really p1sses me off when people try to impose their own choices on other people.

The geezer sounds a right tw4t 🙄

Meat is an occasional treat for me. I have heard people calling themselves piscatorians if they eat fish but not mammals but I can see no justification for this – morally or healthwise. I suppose fish are “free range” but what is the moral difference between fish and free range / wild meat?

Load of tosh 🙄

Surely an aquatarian is someone who only drinks water.

I’m veggie, and think this ‘aquatarian’ is a fool. Just to throw something else into the mix, though, I wear leather shoes. It may incorrectly be called hypocritical, but it’s the line I draw. If I was advocating being vegetarian as an absolute principle, I’d be talking crap. I’m not though. I’m pragmatically veggie because it reduces cruelty in the world. The cruelty to my feet of plastic shoes must be balanced against that felt by a few cows. I win because I’m a human. 😛

Yep, bellend. I’ve noticed an increasing amount of self-proclaimed “vegetarians” who eat fish though, so he’s not alone.

I believe the correct term is pescatarian. Or in this case, tosser. 😛

I knew a girl who use to spew on about being a vegetarian but though it was ok to eat chicken. I never could get my head around that one.

The cruelty to my feet of plastic shoes must be balanced against that felt by a few cows. I win because I’m a human

surely if using that argument you’d be eating meat as well as wearing it….

the GF and another housemate are veggies. both wear leather, consume eggs and milk. there reasoning is that they don’t want to eat something that has been killed or because they don’t like the texture.

pansies, that’s what they are.

we do end up with some nice vegetarian meals but it’s a pain in the arse when you are cooking yourself and have to tkae into consideration their ‘beliefs’. i even ate some zucchini once.

then we’ve got our mate next door. she is lactose intolerent, can’t eat flour, pork, certain rices…. infact i can’t list everything she shouldn’t eat because it is so long and obscure.

suffice to say we need an extra hob to cook on when everyone is round.

egg’n’bacon sandwich, tommy one side, brown the other on thick cut white bread with a cupa-T…. ah.

I don’t believe in Astrology….

It’s a bit random. I’ve had this discussion with my girlfriend who used to be vegetarian but ate fish and seafood, and now eats venison and outdoor reared “happy” meat occasionally, cooked rare of course…

Does he mean he would eat anything that lives in water? In which case, crustaceans and molluscs should be OK if fish are in the firing line. But what about squid and octopuses, arguably as “clever” as some mammals but molluscs all the same. Any issues with snails, which are basically waterproof shellfish? Then we move onto dolphins and whales – fair game? They live in the sea too. Then there are seals and penguins whose lives are almost entirely linked to the sea and they spend masses of time at sea. And what about otters, hippopotamuses, ducks and swans?

Not many places sell Swan 😉 They fight back.

Pool reared cattle! everybodies happy

i once met a vegeteriam who on closer questioning did not eat red meat and considered himself a veggie… I therefore proclaimed myself a non smoker as I never touched cigars(ex smoker now BTW~)… he said i was being stupid… I said he started it.

The cruelty to my feet of plastic shoes must be balanced against that felt by a few cows. I win because I’m a human

surely if using that argument you’d be eating meat as well as wearing it….

That’s the thing.. I draw a line between those points. Some bit of an animal every day for food (or more than once a day) in comparison to some bit of an animal a few times a year for shoes.

Pragmatism in pursuit of a goal rather than absolutist rhetoric. I’m not at all squeamish, and know I would enjoy hunting if I had to do it to survive. In the meantime, I save a few cows.

My Mum’s been a vegitarian for about 40 years. She came out to visit us in Spain here and met my partner’s Mum who’s a 75 year old Basque woman who’s lived through Franco and whose husband was imprisoned around that time (for smuggling bicycle parts, honestly). She just couldn’t understand that my Mum didn’t eat meat or fish, she couldn’t grasp the concept at all. She’d obviously been thinking about it and said to me a few days later, “I think that she’s just never been really hungry”.

So what do you call somebody who doesn’t eat meat because they don’t want to but wears leathers, Dr Marten’s boots, belts etc. ?

I’m not sure there’s a word for it. What about ‘leather-wearing vegetarian’?

Hairychested – That would be a “Crusty” (copyright Daily Mail 1982), or just a vegetarian.

Don’t think the definition has owt to do with what you wear, just what you eat.
So theoretically, you could be a vegetarian slaughterman, or woman.

some strict vegetarians won’t wear leather (or wool, or silk) but in my experience a lot of veggies aren’t that bothered about anything animal derived unless it’s food.
personally, i think it’s a bit weird and hypocritical if they’re vegetarian for ethical reasons but there you go.

Don’t mind vegetarians. Cooked some lovely tomato and mushroom sauce with pasta the other day, for a mate who rarely eats meat. We had grated cheese on top, which provided some protein. A lot of Indian food is vegetarian, and extremely healthy. There’s so many varieties of vegetables.

Did something simliar yesterday, for a little friend. Courgette and tomato with fresh Basil. Mmm..

I did have a right bloody oozing bit of rump steak in the evening, though!

I have no problem with people who choose not to eat meat, because they don’t like the taste. Ethical vegetarians, though, they annoy me slightly.

But don’t get me started on Vegans, ffs. They are just wrong.

Hypocrisy is the act of being less critical of oneself than of others. Consuming some animal products and not others isn’t strictly hypocritical, but I see your point.

I think everyone operates with some amount of it. Unless you are entirely amoral in your consumer choices, or live like a hermit on a desert island, there is a line you draw where you’ll buy X but not Y.

To live a truly 100% ethical (in the sense of causing no harm) life in this system isn’t possible. Everything we do ultimately produces or relies on some environmental harm, injustice, etc.

Hypocrisy is the act of being less critical of oneself than of others. Consuming some animal products and not others isn’t strictly hypocritical, but I see your point.

but that’s what i mean by “ethical” reasons; that is, in my experience a great proportion of ethical vegetarians are fairly vocal animal rights advocates and as such, if they’re wearing leather themselves but are quite happy to berate others for eating animals then that surely is hypocritical of them?

anyway it’s not something i really want to get into because despite me saying the above, i am vegan myself but don’t really care too much what others choose to eat/wear and yes i agree that we’re all ‘guilty’ to some extent. i’m just personally quite comfortable with the way i choose to live. i’m sure someone will point out that me bringing up the leather issue is going against that though; i was merely mentioning it for the sake of discussion and i’d never have a go at an individual for their own dietary/consumer choices. there’s just no point.

so, with that in mind- fred, why am i wrong? i don’t think you are ‘wrong’ for eating meat or whatever…

mrs lister is a veggie (purely cos she doesn’t like meat, nowt ethical) and it now drives me mad as well when the vegetarian option on a menu is fish…it’s really weird that the concept of seafood being ‘ok’ exists tbh, what do the eejits think a fish is made from? swimming carrots??

so, with that in mind- fred, why am i wrong?

You’re a Vegan. Nuff said! 😉

In order to accurately label someone a hypocrite who fails to practice what they preach, one would have to find proof that the preaching itself was not genuine.

xherbivorex – I agree with you in not really caring too much what others choose to eat/wear

I think people who berate others for what they eat are first and foremost simply rude. It’s just bad manners. When I’m trying to enjoy a fried egg sandwich I don’t need telling it’s wrong.

Mmm, fried egg sandwich. I’m off to make one right now! 🙂

Everyone picks an arbitrary point at which they stop eating animal derived things, on a scale with complete vegans at one end, and cannibals at the other.

99% of people pick a point somewhere away from the extremes, like being a vegetarian, or a meat eater. Unless you’re happy to eat dead people, or you abstain from all animal products you aren’t at either extreme so you’ve picked your own brand of ‘hypocrisy’.

Being a person who eats fish, but doesn’t eat meat, is just another point on the scale. It is annoying though when people like that refer to themselves as ‘vegetarians’, because it spreads the idea that stupid people sometimes have, that all vegetarians eat fish. Similarly when people who are basically vegan (dairy free etc.) refer to themselves as vegetarian, it can also cause confusion.

There are environmental and historical arguments for not eating meat. Historically (particularly in the ‘caveman’ days) we ate far less meat than we do now, and our bodies aren’t really designed to eat so much meat. Environmentally, meat takes far more energy (something like 10 times as much) to produce the same quantity of food (in terms of calories) than non-meat sources. I have a feeling that non-farmed fish are more environmentally friendly than farmed animals, meaning that this might be a reason someone would choose to eat fish but not meat.

Joe

My mentalist other half is a veggie, except she’ll quite happily eat chicken. WTF is that all about???

I have a feeling that non-farmed fish are more environmentally friendly than farmed animals, meaning that this might be a reason someone would choose to eat fish but not meat.

It’s probably true, but I’ve never heard a piscerian give that as a reason. I think that’s what’s confusing and annoying about them – that mostly they make a ostensibly moral stance to not eating meat, but have no logical reason why they eat fish. It’s a weird hybrid of beliefs – the dichotomy between the rational and logical decision to not eat meat and the irrational and impulsive decsion to eat fish is pretty odd. So it makes their position open to attack, and effing annoying when they are pious or hectoring about it.

Or something.

Speaking as a vegetarian FWIW. Not a vegan, though I virtually am in terms of what I eat. But my love of clothes means I turn a blind eye to animal-derived stuff as long as it makes me look like a raffish dandy of coolness. Hypocritical, irrational, selfish and indefensible? Probably. But who needs moral rectitude when you’ve a wardrobe full of vintage leather boots 🙄

Surely fish IS meat? IE, the flesh of an animal?

My mentalist other half is a veggie, except she’ll quite happily eat chicken. WTF is that all about???

Quite. I went out with a girl once who claimed she was pretty much vegetarian, yet ate various burgers at Mc and BurgerKing all the time, when queried about this, she said it didn’t count as it wasn’t real meat!
I suspect that there are a significant minority of people who call themeselves vegitarians because at some level it makes them feel like they are doing something positive in much the same way as some fat people say they are on a diet, whereas their calorie intake would suggest otherwise.

used to live with a girl who was a vegitarian:

apart from bacon sarnies on sunday morning
or roast chicken
or weekends
or other peoples bacon sarnies
or if she was hungover
or if it was too much trouble for the chef

basically love – you’d like to be a vegitarian but your shit at it!

Evolution has made us omnivores. That is a good thing, as it means we can eat all manner of lovely meaty goodness and all manner of lovely veggie goodness (Asparagus tonight!) as well as all manner of fishy goodness.

Not aquatarian, just weak.

I’m veggie out of preference, in 20 odd years I haven’t seen anything thats tempted me <insert ribald comment here>

Chela – good reasoning, the other reason is have you ever tried the alternatives to leather in shoes (formal work wear particularly)??
Trench foot in a week. Can’t be vegan just for that.

And car upholstery of course 😀

whats the argument that supports it? he was a bit of an idiot and couldnt put it forward.

Plenty that might be reasonably considered. The most obvious being that only certain entities are morally considerable. For a carnivore, that category might exclude all non-human life, a vegan might deem all animals morally considerable and therefore avoid products which derive from (or perhaps instrumentalise) animals (yes, a fish is an animal).

A lot of people sit somewhere in the middle, including your “aquatarian” or whatever label he gave it fella(pescatarian is normal word for this). It may well be that he considers fish/seafood morally less considerable than mammals/birds/amphibians/reptiles etc… for any number of reasons. Most common (and closely related) ones might be that 1) Sentience confers moral consideration (less sentient beings (ie molluscs, crustaceans…) less morally considerable therefore can be eaten). Or 2) Only mammals/birds (etc) feel pain, therefore if the avoidance of the causation of suffering is the basis for decision making, pescatarianism may seem justified.

Argument 2 I would argue falls down in light of evidence that pain can be felt even in lower order animals, and also that I personally do not take pleasure/pain to be justifiable as a singular basis for ethical consideration. A lot of people might still articulate this type of argument as justification.

Argument 1 is a little tighter, but only if you believe that sentience is a reasonable basis for establishing moral considerability (and you can argue why you draw the line where you draw it). Again, I’d argue that this is not satisfactory.

There are loads of other more complex arguments based in rights and virtue ethics, but the two above are the most common ones that I’ve heard.

I think eating fish is way more morally objectionable than eating meat. Between fishing methods that lay waste to entire ecosystems, farming methods that turn delicate habitats into sewage (tiger prawns), and species that have been overfished to the point of near extinction, there doesn’t seem to be much choice out there at all.

our bodies aren’t really designed to eat so much meat

So who’s the designer? Can we complain?