Haven't sardines, like most other fish, been overfished, making them ethically questionable too?

As a portuguese I can tell you that sardine stocks are heavily controlled and regulated and there are years where the catchable tonnage is severely reduced. As the fish markets are centralized, meaning fishermen need to sell their catch in a government auction house, you cannot really do industrial fishing out of allowed stock quotas. Sardines quotas are the target of heavy diplomatic negotiations with EU.

South Africa has a pretty strong S. sagax stock, but it all gets canned or ground into fish meal. Eating fresh sardines just isn’t part of the culture — so sad.

I rely on SeafoodWatch.org to advise on fish sustainability, and it doesn't look good for sardines: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/recommendations/search?query=%3...

Yes, kind of. That said, as far as I know anything that is more complex to digest like dark bread helps prevent type 2 diabetes. (But maybe it's anyway better to talk to a real doctor or at least a food expert if that is any concern...)

Overfishing of sardines happen because most of it is ground up and used as feed in aquaculture (which is very inefficient). Instead, if you consume sardines directly, it will be a more sustainable enterprise.

Aside from eating animals in general, what is ethically questionable of octopus salad?

They're incredibly intelligent, and there's a healthy debate around whether they're actually conscious[1]. I tend to question whether I should be eating something that might reasonably be aware, were it alive, that it's about to die.

1. see e.g. https://qz.com/1045782/an-octopus-is-the-closest-thing-to-an...

I’m pretty certain the mammals we eat are conscious, and that doesn’t seem to bother most of us.

I've had a growing suspicion that even plants have more 'awareness' than we give them credit for. You still gotta eat, though.

They are certainly aware. At the simplest level, we know for a fact they respond to their environment. On accelerated time scales, it is also fairly obvious to see them compete with other plants and branches of themselves. We also know they communicate with other plants, warning them of the danger of insect predators, to which they respond by increasing the production of natural insecticides.

Though I can't prove it, I'm edging toward the belief they share resources with each other, including water and nutrients through the root system.

All these facts and ideas are easily undone by particularly defining "awareness" and so this is largely a terminological problem.

The discussion quickly becomes, "Define awareness." or ... more generally ... "Define consciousness," which we see with machines, insects, plants, even single celled organisms.

Here's what science does tell us repeatedly: Those things which humans as a species are convinced have no consciousness is decreasing. Most, even today, would not believe an octopus is conscious, but we now think they are. Dolphins. Birds, even fish now have scientific studies indicating they are self-aware.

So, yeah, justifying the eating of plants because they lack self-awareness isn't a valid argument in my book.

That doesn't absolve us of a mission to reduce suffering for the things we eat.

Plants can certainly suffer and it's trivial to identify.

Do really people not consider mammals--even mammals they have regular exposure to such as dogs and cats--to be conscious? I know people tend to have a superiority complex when it comes to other animals but I have a hard time believing that they don't consider them to be conscious.

Yes, there are vast numbers of them. I know doctors who do not believe the dog at the door wagging its tail when the person arrives to be experiencing emotions.

I believe the dog is happy and excited and eager to greet its friend of another species, but many, many people believe that dog is exhibiting purely mechanical behavior driven by instinct alone.

The existence of consciousness in other species doesn't mean we have a mission to reduce suffering. That's an illogical non sequitur.

I wasn't including you when I said us.

Plus sometimes an animal eats another animal with a higher degree of consciousness than himself. A tiger eating a monkey for example.

Prevailing attitudes aren’t a good barometer for judging the ethics of our individual choices.

Quite possibly the poster is referring to the intelligence of octopuses. Have a look at My Octopus Teacher (On Netflix) and you will see.

I've rationalized eating the very intelligent octopus with the fact that they live for a maximum of like 2 years.

Octopuses are also cannibals, so your tentacled hero has questionable ethics sense also. If you eat an octopus you will probably be saving the live to dozens of baby octopuses (those score higher because cuteness card)

As usual when we apply "random ideology" we fall in an end road. From this point all are exceptions and excuses to fill the plot-holes, so the new guardians of the moral can keep asking for donations