The Pesco Vegetarian Diet
"Pesco/pollo vegetarianism", "pescetarianism" or "semi-vegetarianism" are neologisms coined in the media to describe certain lifestyles of restricted diet. Most commonly, these include the practice of not eating certain types of meat (most commonly red meat such as beef, pork, lamb) while allowing other meats, such as seafood. As with popular vegetarianism, there are usually no restrictions on non-flesh animal products such as dairy and eggs.
More About the Pesco Vegetarian Diet
Terminology
Terms for these diets arose in response to growing numbers of people
(particularly in the United States) who have restricted diets that do not
fully meet the definition of more restrictive diets such as vegetarianism or
veganism.
Semi-vegetarian is another, rarely used general term to describe the diets,
but is also fairly ambiguous. In Britain during the early 1990s, some people
used the term demi-vegetarian.
Pescetarianism
Pesco is derived from the Latin for fish. Pesco-vegetarians eat fish but
restrict or exclude other meats or animal products.
Pescetarian is a variant of pesco-vegetarian that dates back in print to at
least 1993. As of August 2004, "pescatarian", "pescotarian", and "piscatarian"
could also be found on the Internet, but "pescetarian" was perhaps the most
popular. (Pesce is Italian, but the English term is usually pronounced with
a hard "c".) "Pescavore" is also quite common, formed by analogy with
"carnivore" (though the more regular word piscivore already existed).
"Fishetarian" was also used in print as early as 1992, but is no longer very
common. A little-used colloquial term on the increase is "vegequarian", also
spelt "vegaquarian".
Pollo-vegetarianism
Pollo is derived from the Latin for chicken. This prefix is then prepended
to the root word vegetarian. Since a vegetarian is one who eats plant-based
foods but restricts or excludes animal flesh, a pollo-vegetarian allows
chicken.
The word "pollotarian" can also be found in internet sources to describe
this diet.
Note that these are ad hoc coinages using Latinate (not genuine Latin) stems
to form new words. The Latin stem meaning "fish" is pisci- and the stem
meaning "chicken" is pulli-.
"pesce-pollotarianism" (or Chickifishitarian) is a pejorative neologism that
means one who includes chicken and fish as non-meats, but pescetarianism and
pollo-vegetarianism are separate entities.
Rationale
There are many rationales for maintaining a pesco or pollo-vegetarian diet.
One 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.
It can be claimed conversely that fish also contain toxins such as mercury
and PCP. In addition, though less effective, flaxseed is another source of
omega-3 fatty acids.
While vegetarians and vegans more often claim animal welfare concerns as
their motivation, pesco/pollo-vegetarians frequently have different
reasoning. Both Pesco-vegetarian 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 in vegetarianism). For this reason, some pescatarians focus
on eating species that are most sustainably fished and avoid many farmed
fish (e.g. salmon) also.
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 chicken or fish in this case is usually
either "I have to eat some kind of meat" (see complete protein), "chicken
and/or fish are less intelligent than other animals", or in the case of
pescetarians "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". 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).
Another ethical consideration of many pescetarians has to do with the
inefficiency of red meat as a 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. Many
pescetarians therefore eat predominantly wild caught fish, using guides such
as the Monterey Bay Acquarium's Seafood WATCH to determine which fisheries
are sustainable and which ones are overused.
See also
* Mediterranean diet
References
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Critical Review"., Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 20,
No. 1, 5-19 (2001)
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228S-231S, (January 2000)
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Cutler JA, Kirchner KA, Kuller LH, Roth KJ, et al., "Short report: the
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6. ^ Committee on the Toxicological Effects of Methylmercury, Board on
Environmental Studies and Toxicology, National Research Council,
"Toxicological Effects of Methylmercury"., ISBN: 0309071402 (2000)
7. ^ Brenda C Davis and Penny M Kris-Etherton, "Achieving optimal essential
fatty acid status in vegetarians: current knowledge and practical
implications"., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 78, No. 3,
640S-646S, September 2003
8. ^ United Egg Producers, "United Egg Producers Animal Husbandry
Guidelines"., 2005
9. ^ Naylor, R.L., Goldburg, R.J., Primavera, J.H., Kautsky, N., Beveridge,
M.C.M., Clay, J., Folke, C., Lubchenco, J., Mooney, H. & Troell, M., "Effect
of aquaculture on world fish supplies"., Nature, 405, 1017-1024. (June 29,
2000)