Pescetarian Diet

Pescetarianism (also known as pescevegetarianism[1] or pesco-vegetarianism) is a dietary choice, in which a person — known as a pescetarian — will not eat the flesh of any animals other than fish or other types of seafood. Other animal products like eggs and dairy may be part of a pescetarian diet. Pescetarianism is the chosen diet of some people for various reasons; most commonly cited are health benefits.

Health benefits
One of the most commonly cited reasons is that of health, based on findings that red meat is detrimental to health in many cases due to non-lean red meats containing high amounts of saturated fats. [2] [3] Furthermore, eating certain kinds of fish raises HDL levels, [4] [5] and some fish are a convenient source of omega-3 fatty acids, [6] and have numerous health benefits in one food variety.[7] Some health websites also state that pescetarianism lifestyle is a more healthy diet than vegetarian and vegan ones[8].

It can be claimed conversely that fish also contain toxins such as mercury and PCBs,[9] though a careful selection of fish can ensure a low-risk or toxin-free product.[10][11]

Comparisons to other diets
Pescetarianism is similar to a traditional Mediterranean diet, which focuses on seafood, grains, fruits, and vegetables. However, the Mediterranean diet does not entirely exclude meat from land animals as pescetarianism does. While pescetarians and vegetarians often cite similar reasons in selecting their dietary choices, pescetarianism is not a type of vegetarian diet.[15] Vegetarians do not consume the flesh of any animal, including sea animals; any diet that includes fish or other sea animals is not a vegetarian diet. However, since pescetarians do not eat mammal-meat or bird-meat, they experience many of the same social pressures as vegetarians, so that the two groups may sometimes have common interests. Occasionally -- and controversially -- terms such as pesco-vegetarian and semi-vegetarian have been used in place of the term pescetarian.

While both groups often cite environmental issues as a rationale behind their diets, pescetarian and vegetarian diets can be each environmentally unfriendly if precautions are not taken, due to the problems of overfishing, by-catch and in both diets, habitat destruction through arable farming. For this reason, some pescetarians focus on eating species that are most sustainably fished and avoid many farmed fish (e.g. salmon).