Words are great social indicators.
I’ve just signed an online petition calling for a UK food
company to include a vegan (ie a non-meat/fish/poultry) option in their sausage
rolls. The petition calls on ‘vegan, vegetarian and
flexitarian’ people to sign the petition. Flexitarian?
It really shows how UK views and eating/food culture is changing:
so many terms are now commonly used to indicate what people eat, alongside the
traditional terms 'omnivore' and 'carnivore'. I hadn't heard of 'flexitarian'
until I saw this petition, but friends of ours refer to themselves as
‘pescatarians’, meaning they are ‘veggies' (i.e. the colloquial form of 'vegetarians')
who also eat fish.
This extract from the HuffPost’s Blog (2011) explains the word
pretty well:
You may be wondering, “What is a pescetarian?”
Pescetarianism, or pesco-vegetarianism, means being vegetarian while still
including seafood in your diet. One still cuts out red meat, pork, poultry,
etc. from his or her diet like a vegetarian, but does not cut out fish and
other seafood.*
And now 'flexitarian', a word completely new to me in January 2018
– though I'm not sure how it's escaped me for so long, as it's been pretty
current for a while it seems! This is what the Collins Dictionary tells me:
Flexitarian:
a person who eats a predominantly vegetarian diet, but who eats
meat or fish occasionally.
Adjective: of or relating to a flexitarian, eg. flexitarian fare
Derived forms: flexitarianism (ˌflexiˈtarianˌism) noun
Word origin of 'flexitarian' C21: from flexi(ble) +
(vege)tarian **
But the odd thing that I’ve always wrestled with (linguistically
speaking) is the use of the word ‘vegetarian’ for people who eat not
only vegetables, but also animal-based products like cheese, yoghurt, eggs, and
so on. I’m always momentarily confused when I see, for instance, ‘omelette’ or
‘baked red onion and goat’s cheese tart’ marked with a large V for Vegetarian.
Bizarre, I always think!
However, it’s not as surprising as what as I saw last summer at a
Greek taverna on a lovely
Cycladean island. Even if
you know the words in Greek, the Greek script is very tricky to read. So the
menu had a helpful English section. But heading up the Vegetarian Section was,
in bold and black, the word “Snails”. We
had to smile: well, it is true, I suppose, that snails basically consist of
lettuce! ;)
* https://www.huffingtonpost.com/chloe-spencer/pescetarianism_b_956965.html (accessed
15.01.2018)
(accessed 29.01.2018)
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