Fish – What do you call people that eat fish but not meat

Kudos to your wife for giving it another shot!

Let me start with what I feel is the most important part of my answer: find a good fish monger and make friends. If the supermarket is the best you can find, so be it, but learn the name of the person behind the counter, ask about the fish, be interested. Ask what's just in, ask what's fresh. If the fish is frozen at sea, ask if you can get some from the freezer instead of the stock in the case that's been thawed and sitting all day.

Ask to touch and smell the fish. Look at the stock - do the whole fish have clear eyes? Does it smell like a dumpster? Getting the freshest, best fish will help you and your wife enjoy it more. Some good suggestions here on shopping for fish.

Now, on to your bullet points. Fish should never smell or taste "fishy". Fishy smelling fish is a sign of bad fish.

I find that a lot of my friends who say they don't like fish have had experiences with poorly handled or old fish. Fish must be fresh (or frozen at sea and handled properly afterward) to be good. I've stopped ordering fish in restaurants unless it specializes in fish (and I don't mean Red Lobster) or is well known for their freshness.

That said, some fish is certainly more strongly flavored than others. I found this nice chart here with a few varieties of mildly flavored fish. I do agree that flaky, white-fleshed fish is generally the mildest. Flatfish, like sole or flounder tend to be consistently mild. Tilapia has become an extremely popular fish lately.

However if you do find a good fish monger, talk to him about it and you should be able to find plenty of interesting venues: monkfish has been called the poor man's lobster, and I had some arctic char the other night that knocked my socks off.

As for why white fish tends to be less strongly flavored than meatier fishes, I can't really answer authoritatively. My guess would be that meatier fishes tend to be more oily and fatty, which equals more/stronger flavor.

I suspect that this is a question that it's impossible to give a definitive answer for.

In reality it's probably a mixture of religion, culture and confusion.

I reckon that in most cases that it boils down to "Fish isn't a meat because when I was growing up I was told it's not a meat", or something like that.

In terms of etymology, "meat" originally just meant "food" and as such could be used for food of any kind. This carries over to some extent in modern usage - we sometimes talk about meat of a fruit/vegetable to describe the inside of it, coconut for example.

Personally I use meat to describe animal flesh regardless of the origin, I don't view the meat/fish deviation as being one that is either meaningful nor useful.

RE: fish and vegetarianism,

Fish isn't vegetarian.

Phew, glad we could clear that up.

There's an accepted meaning for the word and it excludes the eating of fish. There are a lot of people who eat fish and are otherwise vegetarian*, which is perfectly fine, but it's a misuse of the word. At the end of the day we all eat what we're comfortable eating, but it can be difficult grouping that many variations. This confuses others and in the end leads to inconvenience to vegetarians.

Oh language...

*Although this probably isn't true. If you're eating fish than it's obviously not on moral grounds so you're less likely to exclude animal products in some of the more obscure places, like may be in wines, cheeses, or indeed any processed goods.