Seafood as Insufficient Fare

Besides perishability, bones, and lack of confidence about how to cook it, it seems that one past objection to fish centered on its perceived lightness in the diet. Fish had a long association with the practice of fasting. In spite of its being animal food, fish occupied a middle ground between red-blooded animals and vegetables and grains. Many found pleasure and satisfaction eating red meat, while eating the relatively blander and low-calorie fish was less pleasant, a good diet for mortification of the human flesh. That qualified it in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church for consumption on days dedicated to supplication and prayer and as the diet for people in holy orders, whose life was spent in fasting. Moreover, mandated eating of fish helped a population conserve meat supplies, and the rule was used from time to time to support fisheries even after the Protestant Reformation.