Weird title for this community, I know. Maybe this isn’t the best place to ask, but it’s the one I thought of.
I try to be vegan, mainly for environmental reasons, but that’s not always possible due to several factors. Usually my priorities go Vegan -> Vegetarian -> Fish -> Chicken -> Pork > Beef
I tried to sort by least to most impact, as well as intelligence. But lately I’ve been wondering if fish does have a smaller impact than chicken and other meats or not, due to what overfishing is doing to oceans. Some times when there are no veggie options I will get like a tuna toast, or a grilled salmon, whatever. But is it actually better? Or show I go for chicken, if I must?
Anyway, wondering what people think.
If you were to go with fish, I think there are other species that are somewhat less environmentally destructive to eat. It’s been a while since I looked but it might’ve been like:
farmed oysters < sardines < herring < etc (from best to worst)
Something like that anyway. Not sure quite how trustworthy it is, but try Seafood Watch for recommendations. Also, small oily fish are incidentally better for you than the big popular ones anyway. Lemmy has a !tinnedseafood@lemmy.world community if you’re unsure what to do culinarily with that sort of fish, might not be that populated though.
Also also, not sure if this is more or less practical since it kinda sounds like you maybe don’t have a lot of choice in your food options, but: seaweed! It’s delicious, vegetarian, and got most of the same crucial nutrients as small oily fish. That’s where they get it from themselves, actually. You can even get culinary oil pressed from seaweed with (hopefully) the same benefits. Personally I keep an assortment of varieties of seaweed fron Maine Coast Sea Vegetables in my pantry and just put them in everything, adds a lot of umami to vegetarian food.
Feel free to disregard any of these brands or w/e, they’re just the ones I use, but obviously never trust a corporation as we all know lol