When Pescatarians Are Vegetarians At Heart
A Fishes Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Sara Streeter, Faunalytics.org
February 2020

When people claim a dietary identity, they are telling us both about what they eat and how they view the world and their place in it.

Fish face

When someone says they are a vegetarian, we know what this means: they don’t eat meat, poultry, or seafood, though they may eat eggs or consume dairy. But as it turns out, this may not be accurate. People may self-identify as vegetarians while continuing to eat seafood if they don’t believe that fish are meat. In this study, one in six participants who said they were vegetarians kept seafood in their diet. Strictly speaking, this makes them pescatarians rather than vegetarians. So why do they still call themselves vegetarians?

What motivates veg*ns to follow these types of diets is a subject of increasing interest to researchers. Answering this question could lead to more effective strategies to curtail the demand for meat. And yet, if some people who say they are vegetarians continue to eat meat, including them in studies that focus on veg*ns could distort the results.

When people claim a dietary identity, they are telling us both about what they eat and how they view the world and their place in it. This study offers insight into how we might interpret some of those messages. For animal advocates, it also demonstrates that a label can be misleading.

To read more, visit When Pescatarians Are Vegetarians At Heart.

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