First of all, what is a pescatarian? Well, the easy way to explain it is I am a vegetarian that eats fish. So why not become a vegetarian instead? I love sushi. Like it might be my favorite meal. I love it that much. I have 5 reasons why I became a pescatarian. When I was deciding to change my diet, I thought about all the things that I would be giving up. Vegan seemed too high maintenance and a vegetarian would mean I would have to give up sushi. That was not an option in my book at the time (maybe someday in the future I’ll change my mind). So let’s get down to it; what are the 5 reasons why I went pescatarian?
1) Eco friendly
So the first of the 5 reasons to be pescatarian? It’s to be eco friendly. Of the 5 reasons to be pescatarian, this was my biggest one. Now I know what you are thinking and yes eco friendly gets thrown around a lot these days. Today’s society is a victim of greenwashing (claiming to be better for the environment to follow “the trend” instead of actually being beneficial for the earth). But vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian are all better for the environment than a traditional meat-eating diet.
A brief explanation on meat verses veggies
Why? Well, it takes a lot more resources to produce a pound of beef than it does a pound of vegetarian protein. Beef, chicken, lamb, and so on, eat crops to survive, usually, in the US this is corn. So, of course, it takes resources to produce that corn. The water and the fuel that it takes to produce that corn and then the water and fuel that it takes to “produce cows” is more than if we just ate the corn instead. This is a very simplified explanation, but I think you get the point. If we just ate the plants instead of the cows there is fewer transportation emissions, less water, and less land being used. Also, cows produce a TON of methane. Gross! And methane is another greenhouse gas.
Additional environmental benefits
It has also allowed me to reduce my plastic waste. I am able to use bamboo cutting boards (meat on bamboo is not the safest or the easiest to clean with raw meat) eliminating the plastic cutting boards. You can use glass, but they dull knives fast. There is less plastic packaging, less Styrofoam packaging, and in general less trash.
My credentials
So how do I know this? I graduated from CSU with a bachelor’s degree in Ecosystem Sciences and Sustainability. I have done a ton of research on this topic, but if you don’t believe and think that I am greenwashing the pescatarian diet than there are plenty of scientific papers to back me up. Take a look for yourself 🙂
2) Meat is hard in a van
Ok so first I have to back up and tell you that I live in a van. Yes, I live in a 60 square foot tiny house on wheels full time. Which means that I don’t have a regular fridge. Nope, I have a mini-fridge which is basically the size of a cooler and looks just like one. So I have to be careful about what I buy and how much I buy because I have about a quarter of the amount of space.
Tiny fridge and meat products, not a good combo
Also, I have no freezer. So freezing meat is not an option which means it would have to go in my fridge. But because of the shape of my fridge, it would either have to sit on the bottom making it harder to see and a pain to get to or it would have to sit on top of my other groceries. If the meat leaked in my fridge it would be a total nightmare to clean up!
Fish has the same issues as meat!
So some of you may be thinking, “But you eat fish, that has all the same problems.” That is true and why I mainly eat fish when I go to a restaurant. In my last year of vanlife, I have bought fresh fish or seafood from the grocery store only five times. Each time I cooked it within 24 hours. Besides cans of tuna fish, I remain most vegetarian while cooking in the van. Cooking as a pescatarian in a van, I feel more comfortable not having to worry about what surfaces the raw meat touched or about clean those surfaces thoroughly enough with my limited water.
3) It gives me more energy and I feel better
Now this one I experienced after I switched, but I did have multiple people tell me about the health benefits before I switched. I knew only a few people personally who were vegetarian or vegan (I mean I majored in Ecosystem Sciences and Sustainability so…), but the majority of information that I got was from posts like this on Facebook and Pinterest and videos on Youtube. To be completely honest a lot of these people were also van lifers. But everyone had similar lists of benefits; a better mood, more energy, better sleep, not feel sluggish after meals, and much more. After experiencing this firsthand over the last year and a half, I can honestly say that I have experienced all of these health benefits. After lunch at my desk job, I use to be tired and needing a midafternoon nap, but now I don’t feel weighed down.
More meat than needed
I speculate that humans were not supposed to eat as much meat as we do today. Back in the caveman days, it was hard to take down something that was meat. This probably made it sparser in their diets. When we domesticated animals, it became easier to come by meat, but still not produced in the same quantities as today. Big herds were probably subject to disease, hard to keep safe, and hard to keep fed, resulting in smaller herds and less meat. Also, you had to keep enough animals for the following year in order to maintain your herd. Now over the years, portion sizes have gotten bigger (the recommended portion of meat is a deck of cards) and this has resulted in us eating more meat than we are meant to. Of course, I am not an anthropologist or a dietitian so this is just my theory. Take it with a grain of salt.
4) It’s cheaper
Now this one wasn’t hard to see. Before fully diving into being a pescatarian, I started cooking more vegetable-based meals. Produce at the grocery store was cheap, much cheaper than meat, and much cheaper than processed foods. There were meals that I would make for my husband and myself that were 10 cents per serving. Now that was a lifesaver for two young adults paying their own ways through college, paying for rent on an apartment, and who were tired of the freshman 15… *Cough, cough* more like 25 (we ate like sh*t our first two years on our own in college).
Why save money…. umm, why not?
Saving money was huge for us. We wanted to travel and have fun with our friends so anything to save us the extra money was worth trying. I was amazed at how much we saved. Our grocery bill went down from $200 a week to $200 a month. In addition to buying more produce, it also helped to have a grocery list! We no longer went to the store hungry, we always had a setlist where each of us only got one extra thing, and we had meals planned out. We used the Tasty app (AMAZING! Highly recommend) and we would check off all the ingredients we had before leaving the house. Less waste = more money saved! When I switched over entirely to being a pescatarian I saw our bill drop even more. We are lucky to have great quality produce here in Colorado so I always felt like I was getting the best possible quality and the greatest variety to work with.
5) I wanted to know what was in my food
Lastly, I wanted to know what I was eating. Now it sounds silly because I was cooking, but what I mean is that with processed dinners like soup, frozen items, and even types of meat I didn’t know what was in them. There were lots of preservatives, artificial ingredients, and chemicals that I didn’t know enough about to feel comfortable placing in my body. With meats I was unsure of what the animals had been fed; was it grass or corn, was it a feedlot or a grassy pasture, how were these animals treated, had they been injected with growth hormones? I had so many questions and not enough time to research all of the companies and all the ingredients. When I pick up a sweet potato I know it is a sweet potato.
Chemicals in EVERYTHING
Now I don’t know what chemicals were used on it, but I don’t know what chemicals were used on the feed for that beef either. If your really worried about pesticides, organic is an option, just make sure to research the organic standards so that you understand the meaning completely. There definitely some produce that should be bought organic because of the amount to pesticides used on those products. Now that’s not to say that I have knowledge about all of my food (cans of tuna can NOT be good for me), but I have more knowledge. This means that I can make better choices and can feel good about having fresh produce as a major staple in my diet.
Hope this helped!
I hope that this helped inform you on the top 5 reasons why I decided to become a pescatarian. While not all of these might apply to you, I hope that you found them helpful when making your own decision about changing your dietary habits. I will update this article with more recent information as time goes on and would love to hear your feedback. Thanks for making it to the end of this article.
Remember to always fact check the information that you find on the internet. I am only human and there is a chance that I have made a mistake. I try to provide information to the best of my ability and provide sources to build creditability (old science paper writing habits die hard).
Alesha Weinland
Learn, Live, Love Abroad
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