Flexitarianism or Flexitarism is a semi-vegetarian diet in which people do not eat

meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...

one or more days a week. Land-use-of-different-diets-Poore-Nemecek

A semi-vegetarian diet (SVD), also called a flexitarian, is one that is centered on plant foods with the occasional inclusion of

. ''Flexitarian'' is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words

Definitions

Different definitions of flexitarianism are used. According to the Dutch environmental organisation ''Natuur & Milieu'', a flexitarian eats no meat, fish or lunch meat for at least one day a week. The Dutch research agency ''I&O Research'' calls people flexitarian when they do not eat meat one or more days a week. The Dutch Food Health authority ''Voedingscentrum'' states that flexitarians do not eat meat (but do eat fish) three or more days a week in between or with a hot meal.

Vegetarianism Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetarianism may ...

is the strict practice of abstaining from consuming meat or any other animal tissue. ''Flexitarianism'' is a neoteric term that gained a considerable increase in usage in both science and public sectors in the 2010s. ''Flexitarian'' was listed in the mainstream ''

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary ''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...

'' in 2012. In 2003, the

American Dialect Society The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society p ...

voted ''flexitarian'' as the year's most useful word. Other

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

s used as synonyms for semi-vegetarianism are ''demi-vegetarianism'', ''reducetarianism'' and ''semi-veganism''.

Developments

In 2015, according to the Voedingscentrum, 55% of Dutch people were flexitarians. According to Natuur & Milieu, in 2016, 67% of the Dutch were flexitarian. According to research by

Wageningen University & Research Wageningen University & Research (also known as Wageningen UR; abbreviation: WUR) is a public university in Wageningen, Netherlands, specializing in life sciences with a focus on agriculture, technical and engineering subjects. It is a globally ...

, the number of Dutch people who call themselves flexitarians increased from 14% in 2011 to 43% in 2019. However, the number of days that self-proclaimed flexitarians ate meat increased over that period from 2.9 days a week to 3.7 days. The researchers suspected that this was mainly due to the inflation of this term among the Dutch. According to a study by

LEI Wageningen UR LEI is one of the research institutes of Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR). Within the Netherlands and Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern E ...

, the proportion of Dutch people who eat meat daily decreased from 26.7% to 18.4% between 2010 and 2012.,
Vlees vooral(snog) vanzelfsprekend: Consumenten over vlees eten en vleesminderen
'. LEI Wageningen UR, juni 2012 According to a study by Dutch research agency ''Motivaction'' at the beginning of June 2012, reducing meat consumption is a conscious choice for 35% of the Dutch. 14.8% of the population ate meat no more than one or two days a week. In

Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...

, 1 in 6 people in 2013 do not eat meat one or more days a week. A quarter opts for a meat-free day at least once a month. In 2003, the

chose the word flexitarian as the most useful word of the year.

Motivations

Common reasons for adopting a semi-vegetarian diet include religious restrictions, weight management, health consciousness, issues relating to

animal welfare Animal welfare is the well-being of non-human animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures such as longevity ...

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sa ...

(see ethical omnivorism), the environment (see

environmental vegetarianism Environmental vegetarianism is the practice of vegetarianism when motivated by the desire to create a sustainable diet that avoids the negative environmental impact of meat production. Livestock as a whole is estimated to be responsible for aro ...

), or reducing resource use (see

economic vegetarianism An economic vegetarian is a person who practices vegetarianism from either the philosophical viewpoint that the consumption of meat is expensive, part of a conscious simple living strategy or just because of necessity. In the developing world, wh ...

). Flexitarians may have attitudes and endorsement behavior concerning health issues,

humanitarianism Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional ...

, and animal welfare.

Varieties

The main fundamental of some specific semi-vegetarian diets is about the inflexible adherence to a diet that omits multiple classes and types of animals from the diet in entirety, rather than a sole focus on reduction in consumption frequency. Some examples include: *Demitarianism: the practice of making a conscious effort to reduce meat consumption largely for environmental reasons. The term was devised in October 2009 in Barsac, France at the combined workshop of Nitrogen in Europe (NinE) and Biodiversity in European Grasslands: Impacts of Nitrogen (BEGIN) where they developed “The Barsac Declaration: Environmental Sustainability and the Demitarian Diet”. *

Pescetarian Pescetarianism (; sometimes spelled pescatarianism) is the practice of incorporating seafood into an otherwise vegetarian diet. Pescetarians may or may not consume other animal products such as eggs and dairy products. Approximately 3% of adult ...

diet: someone who follows this diet eats

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

and/or

shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...

and may or may not consume dairy and eggs. The consumption of meat, such as poultry, mammal meat and the flesh of any other animal is abstained from. In the past, some vegetarian societies used to consider it to simply be a less-strict type of vegetarianism."International Health Exhibition", ''The Medical Times and Gazette'', 24 May 1884
712
"There are two kinds of vegetarians—one an extreme form, the members of which eat no animal food whatever; and a less extreme sect, who do not object to eggs, milk, or fish. The Vegetarian Society ... belongs to the latter more moderate division." This is no longer the case now that modern day vegetarian societies object to the consumption of all fish and shellfish. *

Pollotarian Pollotarianism is the practice of adhering to a diet that incorporates poultry as the only source of meat in an otherwise vegetarian diet. While ''pollo'' specifically means chicken in both Spanish and in Italian (with ''pollame'' meaning poult ...

diet: someone who follows this diet eats

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

and/or other

poultry Poultry () are domesticated birds kept by humans for their eggs, their meat or their feathers. These birds are most typically members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes (which includes chickens, quails, a ...

and usually eggs as well. A pollotarian would not consume

seafood Seafood is any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish. Shellfish include various species of molluscs (e.g. bivalve molluscs such as clams, oysters and mussels, and cephalopods such as octopus an ...

, the meat from

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

s, or other animals often for environmental, health or

food justice The Food Justice Movement is a grassroots initiative which emerged in response to food insecurity and economic pressures that prevent access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate foods (food should fit the cultural background of the ...

reasons. *

Macrobiotic diet A macrobiotic diet (or macrobiotics) is a fad diet based on ideas about types of food drawn from Zen Buddhism. The diet tries to balance the supposed yin and yang elements of food and cookware. Major principles of macrobiotic diets are to reduce ...

: a plant-based diet that may include occasional fish or other seafood. Cereals, especially brown rice, are the staples of the macrobiotic diet, supplemented by small amounts of vegetables and occasionally fish. Some advocates of the macrobiotic diet promote a vegetarian (or nearly vegan) approach as the ideal. *

Planetary health diet The planetary health diet is a flexitarian diet created by the EAT-Lancet commission as part of a report released in ''The Lancet'' on 16 January 2019. The aim of the report and the diet it developed is to create dietary paradigms that have the fo ...

: dietary paradigms that have the following aims: to feed a growing world's population, to greatly reduce the worldwide number of deaths caused by poor diet, and to be environmentally sustainable as to prevent the collapse of the natural world.

Dietary pattern

All semi-vegetarians could accurately be described as people who eat a

plant-based diet A plant-based diet is a diet consisting mostly or entirely of plant-based foods. Plant-based diets encompass a wide range of dietary patterns that contain low amounts of animal products and high amounts of plant products such as vegetables, fru ...

, but there is no firm consensus how infrequently someone would have to eat meat and fish for their diet to be considered a semi-vegetarian diet rather than a regular plant-based diet. Recurring conditions of a semi-vegetarian include consuming red meat or poultry only once a week. One study defined semi-vegetarians as consuming meat or fish three days a week. Occasionally, researchers define semi-vegetarianism as eschewing red meat in entirety and flexitarianism as the distinct practice of eating very little meat. Semi-vegetarianism/flexitarianism may be the default diet for much of the world, where meals based on plant materials provide the bulk of people's regular energy intake. In many countries, this is often due to financial barriers as higher incomes are associated with diets rich in animal and dairy proteins rather than carbohydrate based staples. One estimate is that 14% of the global population is flexitarian.

Society and culture

In the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, there was increased demand for vegan products in 2018. A 2018 study estimated that the amount of UK consumers following a “meat-free diet” had increased to 12%, including 6% vegetarians, 4% pescetarians and 2% vegans. A 2018 poll indicated that 10% of adult Canadians considered themselves as vegetarians or vegans, among whom 42% were young adults. In 2019, an international group stated that the adoption of the flexitarian diet would "save lives, feed 10 billion people and all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet," when compared to the current western diet. The term ''flexitarian'' has been criticized by some vegetarians and vegans as an

oxymoron An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposing meanings within a word or phrase that creates an ostensible self-contradiction. An oxymoron can be used as a rhetorical devi ...

because people following the diet are not vegetarians but

omnivore An omnivore () is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and animal matter, omnivores digest carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber, and metabolize the nutr ...

s as they still consume the flesh of animals.Iacobbo, Karen; Iacobbo, Michael. (2006). ''Vegetarians and Vegans in America Today''. Praeger. pp. 164-168.

Sources

{{Veganism and vegetarianism Semi-vegetarianism