My commitment to vegetarianism was, at its best, fickle, and at its worst, a facade I put up when I would glare judgmentally at friends biting into a filet mignon across the table. In these moments, I would boldly claim “Meat is murder!”, only to break my oath of vegetarianism a few weeks later when the smell of chicken grew too tempting. The funny thing was, as much as I wanted to taste the forbidden fruit, it always tasted a bit off, which acted as the catalyst for new waves of short-lived vegetarianism.
This cycle, which is exactly what it was – a cycle, had the shelf life of about a month (maybe two if I had just seen a graphic meat industry documentary), and would continue throughout my childhood. In hindsight, I have doubts about whether I was ever truly a vegetarian, for the capricious manner that I jumped between eating meat and opposing it simply felt invalid, as if my vegetarianism was something that I wanted, but was just out of the tangible grasp of my willpower.
In terms of what prompted me to partake in the ebbs and flows of my vegetarianism, the inspiration came close to home – my mother, who had stopped eating meat as a child. Because of her, the majority of meals eaten in my family home were vegetarian. The only time that there was meat in the house was when company was over, which is precisely when it became manifest to me that the majority of families, that being nine out of ten Americans, rely on meat consumption as a staple food source.
Now, I no longer pretend that I am strictly anything, meaning that being 100% vegetarian remains personally unobtainable. Although I prefer to abstain from consuming meat due to ethical reasons, it often comes down to whether it is served in a restaurant or not, and if I feel like being an exigent customer. Yet, this in itself is an interesting cultural sentiment – the fact that deciding to not eat meat, and thus, having to ask a waiter to remove meat from a dish at a restaurant, ultimately makes me feel like I am being difficult, or, in other words, pushing against the norm. Speaking with my peers, whom I often am able to observe in terms of their eating habits, I noticed that meat remained a large part of their diets when cooking. I never knew how unique my meals growing up were until a friend of mine remarked, “Is that really all you’re going to eat?”, when looking down at my vegetarian plate.
I recently noticed that my mother, who I had always labeled as an almost “diehard vegetarian”, had been consuming large amounts of seafood. Although it felt odd to admit, my once 100% vegetarian mom was now 100% pescatarian. I thought about my own “cycle” of vegetarianism growing up, and felt that her now eating fish made sense, considering that being 100% anything takes great mental diligence. Yet, the fact that she was eating fish did not register to me as her eating meat, it almost felt as if she was still a vegetarian.
Lately, however, the question has begun to arise: where do we draw the moral and ethical line between vegetarianism and pescatarianism?
It seemed to me, based on my mother’s decision to allow the consumption of seafood into her diet, that eating fish was somehow more redeemable than eating a cow, pig, or chicken. Although, of course, fish are far higher on the ladder of consciousness than vegetables, I find that the general attitude towards killing fish is similar to that of killing bugs. Perhaps, it was staring into the tank of my small betta fish for too long, watching as she nibbled on her fish food and occasionally stare back at me (or so it seemed). Or perhaps, it was watching a few clips from Netflix’s Seaspiracy documentary. Regardless of what prompted this new idea, I began to see a catastrophic flaw in the logic that groups together vegetarianism and pescatarianism.
Seaspiracy points out some major conceptual flaws regarding the consumption of seafood, noting that although there are great efforts to ban the eating of sharks, about 40% of all marine life caught in mass fishing is bycatch that gets thrown back into the ocean, often dead, which makes up for over 50 million sharks caught per year in the nets intended to catch globally eaten fish. The documentary goes on to disclose that although the shark fin industry is blamed for the killing of sharks, this industry is only centered in Asia, whereas mass fishing is a global industry. It is misconceptions like this that often give line to thinking that eating one thing is more ethical than eating another. In reality, where do we draw the line between killing sharks, tuna, and cows?
I began to think about whether my once “diehard vegetarian” mom had ulterior motives in switching from vegetarianism to pescatarianism, and was curious to hear her opinions and sentiments behind the ethical line between eating fish versus other meat.
I asked her, What made you decide to become a vegetarian?
I never liked meat, partly because I never ate it growing up in South Korea at an orphanage. Only when I came to America as a child did I begin to eat meat. I never liked it, and watched too many animal farming exposés (to eat it consciously).
Do you think that some animals are more okay to eat because they are more/less conscious than others?
No. Animals are animals and they all want to live, even if it might be in different ways.
Why do you eat seafood?
I got a lot of comments throughout my whole life that said, “You need protein”. I began eating seafood because of this – this need for more protein. It is all full of contradictions, unless you’re a hard core vegan. Even if you eat cheese or eggs, you’re still exploiting an animal for your own sustenance. There’s just a lot of contradictions.
Tell me more about receiving the “You need protein” comments.
Nowadays, being a vegetarian is almost “hip and trendy”. Growing up as a vegetarian, the only thing at restaurants you could eat were french fries or a salad, and vegetarian alternatives didn’t really taste good. Now, there are so many options, meaning that it is more widely accepted, so much so that you see these trendy vegan cafes and restaurants. Since being a vegetarian growing up meant that my diet was extremely limited due to the lack of alternatives, most people didn’t think I was getting enough vitamins or proteins to be a “healthy human being”. It comes not from people’s ignorance on the subject, but their general lack of knowledge. I felt as if there was a stigma for not eating meat because most people thought I must have been unhealthy and lacking sustenance.
If anything becomes elucidated through her responses, it was the fact that there is a widespread lack of knowledge throughout all realms of eating meat, or the lack thereof. I have to admit, I was glad to hear that she began eating seafood not because she felt fish were ethically okay to eat through the lens of vegetarianism, but because she felt a need for increased protein in her diet.
There truly are a lot of contradictions in how we justify what goes into our bodies, and one can only hope that through increased spread of information in the modern age, we can move away from the vegetarian diet of only eating french fries and towards one that allows for balanced meals that at the same time reduce the loss of animal life.