Pescetarianism
Encyclopedia
Pescetarianism is the practice of a diet
Diet (nutrition)
In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. With the word diet, it is often implied the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management...

 that includes seafood
Seafood
Seafood is any form of marine life regarded as food by humans. Seafoods include fish, molluscs , crustaceans , echinoderms . Edible sea plants, such as some seaweeds and microalgae, are also seafood, and are widely eaten around the world, especially in Asia...

 but not the flesh of other animals.

In addition to fish and/or shellfish
Shellfish
Shellfish is a culinary and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater environments, some kinds are found only in freshwater...

, a pescetarian diet typically includes all of vegetables, fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

, nuts
Nut (fruit)
A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...

, grain
Whole grain
Whole grains are cereal grains that contain cereal germ, endosperm, and bran, in contrast to refined grains, which retain only the endosperm. Whole grains can generally be sprouted while refined grains generally will not sprout. Whole-meal products are made by grinding whole grains in order to make...

s, beans, eggs
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...

 and dairy
Dairy
A dairy is a business enterprise established for the harvesting of animal milk—mostly from cows or goats, but also from buffalo, sheep, horses or camels —for human consumption. A dairy is typically located on a dedicated dairy farm or section of a multi-purpose farm that is concerned...

. The Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster
Merriam–Webster, which was originally the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is an American company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language .Merriam-Webster Inc. has been a...

 dictionary dates the origin of the term "pescetarian" to 1993 and defines it to mean: "one whose diet includes fish but no meat
Meat
Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...

".

Etymology

Pescetarian is probably a neologism formed as a portmanteau of the Italian word pesce ("fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

") and the English word "vegetarian". The Italian word is pronounced ˈpeʃe, while the English neologism is commonly , with a /sk/ sound, thus differing from pronunciations of similar terms in English and Italian.

Pesce in turn derives from the Latin piscis, which has the form pisci- when it serves as a prefix, as it often does in scholarly terms (e.g. "pisciculture" /ˈpɪsɨkʌltʃər/), or "piscivore
Piscivore
A piscivore is a carnivorous animal which eats primarily fish. Piscivory was the diet of early tetrapods , insectivory came next, then in time reptiles added herbivory....

" /ˈpɪsɨvɔr/). Note that a piscivore, as a type of carnivore, eats a diet primarily of fish, whereas the neologism pescetarian refers to persons who consume plant derivatives as well as fish.

Transition to vegetarianism

For some, becoming either vegan or vegetarian is the overall goal and the pescetarian diet is sometimes seen as an interim in a period of transition from a Western pattern diet
Western pattern diet
The Western pattern diet, also called Western dietary pattern or the meat-sweet diet, is a dietary habit chosen by many people in developed countries, and increasingly in developing countries. It is characterized by high intakes of red meat, sugary desserts, high-fat foods, and refined grains...

 to a vegan or vegetarian diet.

Health considerations

One of the most commonly cited reasons is that of health
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...

, based on findings that red meat
Red meat
Red meat in traditional culinary terminology is meat which is red when raw and not white when cooked. In the nutritional sciences, red meat includes all mammal meat. Red meat includes the meat of most adult mammals and some fowl ....

 is detrimental to health in many cases due to non-lean red meats containing high amounts of saturated fat
Saturated fat
Saturated fat is fat that consists of triglycerides containing only saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have no double bonds between the individual carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain. That is, the chain of carbon atoms is fully "saturated" with hydrogen atoms...

s. Eating certain kinds of fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 raises HDL
High density lipoprotein
High-density lipoprotein is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins, which, in order of sizes, largest to smallest, are chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL, and HDL, which enable lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides to be transported within the water-based bloodstream...

 levels, and some fish are a convenient source of omega-3 fatty acid
Omega-3 fatty acid
N−3 fatty acids are essential unsaturated fatty acids with a double bond starting after the third carbon atom from the end of the carbon chain....

s, and have numerous health benefits in one food variety. A 1999 meta-study
Meta-analysis
In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of effect size, for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the...

 of five studies comparing vegetarian and non-vegetarian mortality rate
Mortality rate
Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time...

s in Western countries found that in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from ischemic heart disease was 34% lower in pescetarians, 34% lower in vegetarians, 26% lower in vegans and 20% lower in occasional meat eaters.

On the other hand, there have been concerns cited about consuming large quantities of some fish varieties due to their containing toxins such as mercury and PCBs, though it is possible to select fish that contain little or no mercury and moderate the consumption of mercury-containing fish.

Comparisons to other diets

Pescetarianism is similar to many traditional diets emphasizing fish as well as fruits, vegetables and grains. Many coastal regions tend to eat this way and these features characterize the traditional Mediterranean diet
Mediterranean diet
The Mediterranean diet is a modern nutritional recommendation inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of southern Italy, Crete and much of the rest of Greece in the 1960s....

 and the diets of many countries in Asia, Northern Europe and the Caribbean. These other traditional diets tend to also include meat, although it is peripheral.
Pescetarians are sometimes described as vegetarian or pesco-vegetarian, and often people unfamiliar with vegetarianism believe the pescetarian diet to be vegetarian. In common with vegetarians, pescetarians often eat eggs and dairy products, in addition to fruits, vegetables and grains. The Vegetarian Society
Vegetarian Society
The Vegetarian Society is a British registered charity established on 30 September 1847 to "support, represent and increase the number of vegetarians in the UK."-History:...

, which initiated popular use of the term vegetarian
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...

as early as 1847, does not consider pescetarianism a vegetarian diet. The definitions of "vegetarian" in mainstream dictionaries vary.

List of pescetarians

This is a list of notable people who are known to be pescetarians or were pescetarians.
  • Nicole Anderson
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  • Mira Aroyo
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  • Brigitte Bardot
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  • Kari Byron
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  • Tracy Chapman
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  • Parvesh Cheena
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  • Common
  • Ted Danson
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  • Alan Davies
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  • Wendy van Dijk
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  • David Duchovny
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  • Susie Essman
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  • Johnny Galecki
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  • Ben Gibbard
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  • Ariana Grande
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  • Lee Hyori
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  • Steve Jobs
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  • Lousewies van der Laan
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  • Harvey Levin
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  • Dannii Minogue
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  • Mary Tyler Moore
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  • Conor Oberst
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  • Amanda Palmer
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  • Andy Serkis
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  • Queen Sofía of Spain
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  • Hal Sparks
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  • Sonny Strait
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  • Hayley Westenra
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External links

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