In many languages, "meat" roughly equates to "red meat". Fish and fowl are considered different categories. I believe this came about because of a Catholic church ruling that fish did not count against the promise to give up meat during Lent. It also lead to silliness like classing the chigüire / capybara, basically a large swamp-dwelling gerbil, as a fish.

My usual answer: "Only Broccoli Fish."

When they ask what a Broccoli Fish is, I explain patiently that there's no such thing.

How about Oysters? http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2010/04/consider_the...

> if I eat seafood

Do you kill invasive insects? Frankly, a shrimp or a lobster is pretty much on a level with a cockroach, when you get down to neural complexity and everything relevant to moral vegetarianism, as opposed to vegetarianism for health reasons.

Bony fish are not much more complex.

Things like sea cucumber don't even have brains: They have nerves, but they lack any centralized structure for them to converge on. Same with jellyfish.

So I suppose my point is that it isn't a dumb question, at least if you're a vegetarian for moral reasons related to killing a living being with emotions.