Fish is a food consumed by many species, including humans. The word “fish” refers to both the animal and to the food prepared from it. Fish has been an important source of protein for humans throughout recorded history.
Health benefits
Research over the past few decades has shown that the nutrients and minerals in fish, and particularly the omega 3 fatty acids found in pelagic fishes, are heart-friendly and can make improvements in brain development and reproduction. This has highlighted the role for fish in the functionality of the human body.
Fish is the most common food to obstruct the airway and cause choking. Choking on fish was responsible for about reported 4,500 accidents in the UK in 1998. In addition, fish can also cause poisoning, especially when the fish is caught in polluted areas. There are issues with fish contaminated with heavy metals such as mercury and lead, or by toxic chemicals such as those containing chlorine or bromine, dioxins or PCBs. Fish that is to be eaten should be caught in unpolluted water. Some organisations such as SeafoodWatch, RIKILT, Environmental Defense Fund, IMARES provide information on species that do not accumulate much toxins/metals.
Fish and meat
Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also describe other edible organs and tissues. The term “meat” is used by the meat packing industry in a more restrictive sense—the flesh of mammalian species (pigs, cattle, etc.) raised and prepared for human consumption, to the exclusion of fish and poultry.
Vegetarians don’t eat fish, and consider that fish is meat, since it is the flesh of an animal.
However, pescetarians eat fish and other seafood, but not mammals and birds. The Merriam-Webster dictionary dates the origin of the term “pescetarian” to 1993 and defines it to mean: “one whose diet includes fish but no meat.” Pescatarians may consume fish based solely upon the idea that the fish are not factory farmed as land animals are (i.e., their problem is with the capitalist-industrial production of meat, not with the consumption of animal foods themselves). However, this is an incorrect assumption, as fish are often raised in aritifical environments, with the same types of cramped, unnatural, and often unsanitary conditions that land animals are raised in. Some eat fish with the justification that fish have less sophisticated nervous systems than land-dwelling animals. Others may choose to consume only wild fish based upon the lack of confinement, while choosing to not consume fish that have been farmed.