Chicken and Fish Are Not Meat Anymore

I have enjoyed a vegetarian diet as a healthy choice for over ten years.  What has me perplexed is how many Americans say they don't eat meat, yet regularly consume chicken and fish, just no beef or pork.  This is not being a vegetarian.  This is avoiding beef and pork.  I would like to know when did "meat" mean only red-meat?  Apparently what ever rationale they have concocted only applies to cows and pigs.  Don't get me wrong, avoiding beef and pork is a healthy choice and many doctors and dieticians would agree with limiting if not eliminating them from anyone’s diet.  I guess it is not cache enough unless it has a healthy sounding name.  

Most people say "vegetarian" and mean "lacto ovo vegetarianism" which is not eating any animal products except eggs and diary.  What I like to call non-flesh eaters.

If people eat no animal products at all, then they are "Vegan".  Or what those pig and cow avoiders might call "hardcore vegetarians".  I make a point with these folks that are all vegetables all the time to bust them if they have any leather products on and comment that it is apparently OK to wear animal products just not eat them.

And finally we have the peak of all plant eaters (something the dinosaurs would be proud of) and that is the "Raw Foods Only" or Macrobiotic crowd that eschews eating only foods that have not been cooked.  These folks seem like complete wackos to me.  The only thing less appealing is licking the bottom of my lawnmower after a session in the backyard and washing it down with some pond water freshly dipped from my neighbor’s koi fishery.

As for the lowly french fries, which for the pig and cow people are not vegetables for some reason, I thought McDonalds stopped using the beef tallow in their cooking oil ten years ago when the fries stopped tasting so good?