Rich's Diet Section

The Diet Pages

Since everyone has to eat to stay alive, dieting is a universal subject and one that has been in the back of my mind for a long time. Over the years my diet has changed considerably and I always wonder where it's heading next? In this section of the site, I explore these changes and attempt to explain how they have come about. I used to say I was a vegetarian and then I would get asked the question; "Why did you become a vegetarian?" to which I would always search for a new way to answer that question. And then when I would invariably mention that I also ate fish, I would be "grilled" about why that was ok but cattle and fowl were not? I never really had a satisfactory answer to that question and I'm not sure I do even now but instead of saying I'm a vegetarian, I decided to invent a new dietary category called the Pescavore. Carnivores (derived from the Latin carne, meat and french vorare to devour) eat meat and omnivores eat anything edible. While traveling in Guatemala in late 2003 and early 2004 I learned the Spanish word for fish was el pescado and I thought, "that's it, I'm a pescavore!". A recent check in my Webster's 9th collegiate dictionary has the word piscivorous which means feeding on fishes but no piscivore or pescavore as nouns. So I take credit for this as a word of my own invention. Interestingly, whenever I tell someone I'm a pescavore, they know exactly what I'm talking about and act as if they've always known the word so until I learn otherwise, I'll take credit for it's invention. I also "Googled it" and came up with one website where the person uses it. Recently, I came across the term pesco-vegetarian in an article in the magazine, WellnessOptions, No.16. The article was entitled Vegetarian Diet and was by Tamara Harth. She defines the subgroup of pesco-vegetarians as people who eat fish and seafood. If you run across any other uses of the term pescovore, I'd really like to know about it so please contact me and let me know where you saw it. I hope you enjoy this dietary saga as you read through this section and maybe it will open your own eyes to new ways of viewing the topic of dieting.

There is really no such thing as "going on a diet" because you have always been and will always be on one, whatever it is and will become. Our diets are just what we are eating at any point of our lives and they change for almost everyone for reasons both beyond and within our control.