Pesco Pollo vegetarianism
"Pesco/pollo vegetarianism", "pescetarianism", and "semi-vegetarianism" are neologisms coined 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 others, such as seafood. There are usually no restrictions on non-flesh animal products such as dairy, eggs, or leather. Those observing such a diet often do so for health reasons although many do practice for ethical or religious reasons.
Terminology
Terms for these diets arose in response to growing numbers of people (particularly in the United States), who have systematically restricted diets that do not meet the restrictions of more stringent diets such as vegetarianism or veganism. The logic of the terms is fairly simplistic: pollo is derived from the Latin for chicken, pesco or pesce from the Latin for fish (although all are actually closer to modern Italian). These prefixes are then appended to the root word vegetarian. Since a vegetarian is one who eats vegetables but restricts animal products, a pesco-vegetarian likewise eats fish and vegetables but may restrict other meats or animal products, and a pollo-vegetarian allows chicken.
"Semi-vegetarian" is even more general, but is also fairly ambiguous. Arguably any normal diet could be called semi-vegetarian.
"Pescetarian" (usually pronounced as English, not Italian) is a variant of pesco-vegetarian that dates back in print to at least 1993 . As of August 2004, "pescatarian", "pescotarian", "piscatarian", and "pollotarian" can all also be found on the internet, but "pescetarian" is the most popular. "Fishetarian" was also used in print as early as 1992, but is no longer very prevalent.
Terminology objections
The main objections to these new terms seem to come from vegetarians and vegans who feel that pesco/pollo-vegetarians are misrepresenting themselves as true vegetarians. This largely ideological objection also has a practical side, which is that if people who actually eat seafood go around calling themselves vegetarians, the public understanding of "vegetarian" will become skewed. It is already the case that diners asking for vegetarian meals at many restaurants are offered dishes with "not very much meat" or "only seafood or chicken". This annoys vegetarians and is likely to continue as long as meat eaters in the United States continue to refer to themselves as vegetarians. The rise of other unusual dietary restrictions such as the Atkins diet may also be leading to more confusion among restaurant staff.
However, there is a practical side to the pesco/pollo-vegetarian side of the argument as well; pesco/pollo-vegetarians may ask for "vegetarian food" only because it is a simple way to ensure that they avoid beef and pork, although fish or chicken would have been acceptable.
These conflicting concerns make a good argument overall for popularizing terms such as "pescetarian" and "pollotarian", which are easily distinguishable from "vegetarian" but provide a way to explain the more complicated eating restrictions succinctly. The "pesco/pollo-vegetarian" terminology could still lead to confusion since it includes the word "vegetarian", but in general a "pesco/pollo-vegetarian" could probably be satisfied simply asking for "no red meat". Semi-vegetarian at first may seem more easily understandable, but is in fact extremely ambiguous.
Rationale
There are many possible rationales for maintaining a pesco/pollo-vegetarian diet. One is health, based on the perception that "red" meat is detrimental, perhaps due to hypercholesterolemia. Many pesco-vegetarians claim that eating certain kinds of fish raises HDL levels that protect against this condition, and also point out that some fish are a convenient source of omega-3 fatty acids.
While full vegetarians and vegans sometimes claim environmental concerns as their motivation, this is less clear-cut among pesco/pollo-vegetarians. In particular, the pesco-vegetarian diet can be environmentally unfriendly if further precautions are not taken, due to the problems of overfishing, habitat damage, and by-catch. For this reason, environmentally conscious pescetarians commonly focus on eating the species that are most sustainably fished and avoid many farmed fish (e.g. salmon) as well.
For some the rationale is ethics: believing that either the treatment, or simply the killing and eating, of mass market meat animals is unethical. The justification for eating chicken or fish in this case is usually either "I have to eat some kind of meat" (see also 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".
