Making dinner was tough enough before Junior became a vegan and Dad got on his low-carb, meat-eater's diet. Now planning a meal and cooking it is not only time-consuming, it's complicated.

Just ask Lateefah Viley, who cooks for her two younger brothers and a sister. Viley is a pescetarian — a vegetarian who eats fish. All three siblings are committed meat lovers, but one won't eat pork; another eats beef but no chicken. The third rejects cheese.

First, you need to know what type of vegetarian she is. The most well known categories include: vegans, who avoid all foods of animal origin; lactoovo-vegetarians, who eat eggs and dairy; and ovo-vegetarians, who eat eggs but avoid dairy.

In my research, I have come across other interesting and creative categories, such as pescetarians, who permit themselves fish, and semi-vegetarians, who eat less meat than the average person. Whether these groups should really call themselves vegetarians is somewhat suspect. I have never met a fruitarian, but apparently these are people who subsist on a diet limited to fruit and vegetables.

Dr Alexander Macnair (Weekend Letters, March 13) states that "butter and beef mountains are the consequences of ill-informed health educators inveighing against meat and animal fat in the diet", which assumes that the Common Agricultural Policy has had little effect.

He goes on to say there is no known "cause and effect relationship" between meat in the diet and diseases such as colon cancer. This is true but then the pathology of lung cancer and Aids has also not yet been fully revealed. He should note that intestinal diverticulitis is almost unknown in vegetarians and pescetarians.