> It’s like saying you’re not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in a while.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/20110...

> Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000 Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, 60% of the self-described "vegetarians" admitted that [they] had consumed red meat, poultry, or fish the previous day.

> Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian

In any casual poll like this, every number has a large margin of error. When 6% of respondents select an answer, some of those were mis-clicks, people who misread the answers, or people who were just clicking through randomly. The latter happens a lot when bad UX means the only way to see the results is to take the poll.

So the more likely explanation is not that people were calling themselves vegetarian but also eating meat recently, it’s that around half of those reporting vegetarians were either mis-clicks or people blindly clicking things. It happens a lot in online polls.

I wonder what the breakdown between meat/poultry and fish was. I know it isn't the dictionary definition, but I think the common definition of "vegetarian" in the US includes people who only eat fish. I don't know anyone that uses "pescatarian" in conversation or identifies as that, even if it's accurate.