Vegetarian, vegan, pescetarian...??

I never realized how many different variations there are on the "vegetarian" diet until I started researching it.

• Vegan—eats no meat/chicken/seafood and no dairy
• Pescetarian—eats veggies and seafood; no meat or chicken
• Flexitarian—a "flexible" vegetarian—a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat (Seriously!!??)
• Pollotarian—veggies and chicken; no meat or seafood

Do people actually use these terms to describe themselves? These sub-catagories seem a bit ridiculous to me...

As I've started talking to people about vegetarianism, I'm finding a lot of people have tried it for a while (me included) and then turned away from it. I haven't asked people why they loose motivation, but I suspect that it could be that they get bored with their choices or maybe they didn't have access to a variety of products where they live.

I am also hearing a lot people say that they are vegetarian, only to see them crack open a can of tuna or eat a piece of pepperoni pizza a few weeks later.

PEOPLE:  If you eat animal, bird, or fish flesh you ARE NOT a vegetarian!!

Trying to figure it all out...

Almond Breeze Milk
only 40 cals per cup

So I definitely decided not to go vegan (for now anyways)! Milk, eggs and butter seem to an ingredient in a lot of recipes and pre-made products (bread and pasta noodles) so it's really is too much effort to try and figure out what has non-veg ingredients.  I don't mind soy, rice or almond milk and I drink them daily (plus almond milk is half the calories of skim milk!!); eggs are something that I have maybe once a week; and butter, I don't use that often, but I definitely trust the "ingredients" more than I do margarine.

I've already discovered that a lot of yogurts have gelatin in them-an animal product-so I've been mindful of which yogurt to choose.

For baking, I now have agar on hand in the event that a recipe calls for gelatin.

Cheese is another story. Not all cheeses that you buy have the ingredients listed so its a bit confusing to know which ones contain animal rennet. Apparently a lot of hard cheeses these days are made with genetically manufactured (GM) rennet and therefore considered OK for vegetarians

Palm Sugar

White, and to some extent brown sugar, is also considered off limits for some vegetarians. The manufacturing process uses charcoal to filter out impurities. This charcoal can sometimes be derived from animal bones. The preferred substitute is maple sugar ($$$!!), corn syrup (meh) or palm sugar. I've used palm sugar, and once you get the stuff ground (or pounded down) it's a great, inexpensive alternative to brown sugar.