Is it Ok to Eat Fish?
After being a vegetarian for about two years, I have become a pescetarian and started to eat fish again
Life means change
I have a special relationship with eating meat. I was born the son of a butcher. Naturally, in our family, we ate lots of meat, almost every day. As an adult, I continued eating beef, pork, chicken, and occasionally fish as well. Two years ago, I became aware of all the problems connected to this form of nutrition. I changed my diet and became a vegetarian. Recently, though, I have adjusted my diet again and became a pescetarian. Here’s why I think this is the best choice for me, at least in my individual life situation.
Omnivorism, pescetarianism, vegetarianism, veganism?
We modern-day humans cannot deny the fact that our descendants lived as omnivores: As far back in time we can trace their diet by archaeological finds and other sources, they ate meat, fish, and plants. Beginning with the first species of archaic humans over two million years ago — Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, and Homo ergaster — to the present-day species Homo sapiens we have always been very adaptable when it came to food. In relation to the long duration of our evolution, only recently people start to question omnivorism as the main form of human nutrition. Today, a growing number of individuals are renouncing meat (pescetarians), as well as seafood (vegetarians), or even all animal products (vegans). Not to mention the various other variants and sub-variants of nutrition that can be chosen at least by us privileged citizens of the western hemisphere.
At first, I was confused about all the options, but it quickly became clear that there are only three lines of argument that possibly could make a person change their diet:
1. Health reasons: For most people, consuming too much meat is unhealthy. This seems to be proven by numerous studies (although one can always argue about the details).¹
2. Ethical concerns: It is evident that the animals that are affected — cattle, pigs, chicken, fish, and so on — do feel joy, fear, and pain in different kinds and intensities. To put it simply: They do not want to be eaten. Though science has proven, in my opinion just careful observation of an animal individual’s behavior in the appropriate situations is enough to realize this fact as well. Additionally, it is highly questionable if what we do with animals before we eat them is ethically justifiable: first, breeding and keeping them under conditions that are often not appropriate to the species, and then, after an often miserable life, killing them. We reduce them to their status as food and no longer see them as living beings.
3. Fear for the environment: Today, so many people eat such large amounts of meat, fish, and animal products, that the demand can only be met by industrial factory farming. Besides being hell for the animals, this industry destroys our planet: Forest areas have to be cleared to create grazing land. The manure from the stable animals pollutes soil and water. Lots of greenhouse gases are released. Fish farms pollute the oceans. The list of environmental damage could go on and on.
My concerns and changes in diet
Two years ago, because of all three lines of argument mentioned above, I decided to become a vegetarian. I did not want to have animals suffer and be killed to serve me as food.
It is clear to me that a vegetarian diet does not take into account the suffering of laying hens and dairy cows and is therefore inconsistent. Here on medium, Macken Murphy wrote a wonderful piece about this.² But for me, one other aspect was crucial: The less you consume animal products, the less you get the supply of vitamin B-12 and other nutrients, which can increase the risk of fractures or strokes, for example.³ To face this problem, it is often recommended to take food supplements. This especially is the case for pregnant or breastfeeding women, small kids, and other groups with a particular need for nutrients.
Being an archaeologist with interests in history as well as in paleontology, I maybe have a special view of the subject. I simply do not believe that medicine or any other science can tell us what really is the best for our physical and mental health. Body chemistry — or simply: life — is far too complex, and we are far from really understanding it. In my opinion, most studies on a vegetarian or vegan diet have little meaning because the resulting effects cannot always be attributed to the diet. Vegetarians and vegans have a healthier lifestyle in general, and that makes it extremely difficult to attribute the health effects to one lifestyle aspect or the other.
Throughout human history, people so often thought they would know about life or what’s right for our health, which later on turned out to be false. Some examples: There must have been some point in early prehistory when someone, maybe an individual of one of the archaic human species mentioned above, first recognized and understood that a fellow individual is dead when their heart stops beating, there is no breath anymore, and the skin starts to turn pale. Those guys already must have thought they knew a lot about life. Why not reverse death by putting red paint on the face of a dead person to make their skin look lively again? Today we would call such behavior primitive. Hundreds of thousands of years later, the ancient Egyptians believed they could give a person eternal life if their body was mummified and the correct rites were performed.
Modern science does not perform significantly better in the crucial questions: Fifty or forty years ago, doctors told women not to breastfeed their children with breast milk but to use artificial, and in their opinion apparently better, milk. Today we know that was wrong. Back in the 19050s, sugar was seen as a panacea. In the 80s, it was milk. I also can remember people telling me some years ago that food supplements would be healthy in general — today we know that it even can be dangerous to take certain substances in pill or powder form in addition to our regular food.⁴
And now for the fish
Being a father of three young children, I just don’t want to risk undersupply by banning animal products from our dining table. Though a vegetarian diet surely reduces this risk compared to the purely vegan variant, there are indications that the consumption of eggs, dairy, and other animal products might not be sufficient to eliminate this risk for all groups of people, especially not for small children.
Bringing seafood back on the menu seems to solve this problem (cf. the story written by Meredith Kirby about starting to eat meat again⁵). But what about the ethical concerns and the environmental damage associated with a pescetarian diet?
I think we have to make one simple decision to find our position on these questions: Are we natural, or are we cultural beings? If I define myself as a natural being, I do what my nature tells me to do, and in this case, this means to be an omnivore. As a cultural being, I am aware of my mind and my prerogative to decide, based on reflection and morality. I think the answer is clear: We modern humans living in western societies are all cultural beings because we all have chosen to live lives surrounded by all kinds of culture. There are hardly any natural elements left that surround us in our daily life, that are not constructed, shaped or influenced by us.
I believe it is possible to reduce environmental damage to a minimum by buying the appropriate, certified products and keeping fish consumption low, while the diet remains mainly plant-based.
The ethical concerns weigh more heavily, though. We know pretty much about the sentience of fish.⁶ I believe they do feel pain, and they do want to live and not to be eaten (though there are studies that claim the oposite⁷). In the end, for me as a cultural being, it’s a utilitarian consideration and therefore a classic compromise: It’s in my and my family’s interest to get the healthiest diet possible, and in my opinion, that’s the pescetarian variant.
So I have decided to eat fish again — being aware of the problems with this decision, willing to further reflect on them.
Live means change.
References
(All links have been accessed on August 17, 2021)
¹ Papier, Keren et al.: Meat consumption and risk of 25 common conditions. Outcome-wide analyses in 475,000 men and women in the UK Biobank study, in: BMC Medicine (19 (53), 2021, 14 pp.
² Macken, Murphy: The Problem with Vegetarianism. Why I stopped being vegetarian, in: medium.com (October 16, 2020).
³ Theobald, Steffen: Vegetarische und vegane Ernährung. Potenzielle Risiken, in: Schweizer Zeitschrift für Ernährungsmedizin 5, 2014, pp. 20–26.
Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Vegetarian Diets, in: Journal of the Acadamy of Nutrition and Dietectics 15 (5), 2015, pp. 801–810.
Tong, Tammy Y. N. et al.: Risks of ischaemic heart disease and stroke in meat eaters, fish eaters, and vegetarians over 18 years of follow-up: results from the prospective EPIC-Oxford study, in: BMJ 366 (l4897), 2019, 10 pp.
Tong, Tammy Y. N. et al.: Vegetarian and vegan diets and risks of total and site-specific fractures. Results from the prospective EPIC-Oxford study, in: BMC MEdicine 18 (353), 2020, 15 pp.
⁴ Find some links here: Kraft, Amy: 7 Popular Supplements With Hidden Dangers: Healthy or risky? Here’s what you need to know about possible harmful effects before you pop that vitamin, mineral, or herbal pill, in: everydayhealt.com (May 13, 2019).
⁵ Kirby, Meredith: Why I Started Eating Meat Again After 17 Years of Vegetarianism. The health and ethics of eating are complex, in: medium.com (November 18, 2019).
⁶ Balcombe, Jonathan: What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, London 2016.
⁷ Rose, J. D. et al: Can fish really feel pain?, in: Fish and Fisheries 15, 2014, pp. 97–133.
About the author
I’m an archaeologist from Germany. On medium purely private. Love asking questions, especially about myself. Trying to stay curious and open-minded, writing mostly about archaeology, history, and topics related to the field of Anthrozoology. Drop me a line if you want to get in contact with me (patrickjung.medium@gmail.com).
