What kind of vegetarian are you?

Are you the sort of vegetarian who enjoys smoked salmon? Photograph: Getty Images/Stockbyte

'Tis January, the season of denial. Pubs lie fallow, restaurateurs tread water waiting for the sugar-pink bonanza of 14 February, and everyone's having a "dry month", no matter what the Met Office says. Some even choose this time of year to go the whole hog, push aside the bacon butty, and take that big drunken-new-year's-resolution step: going vegetarian.

Problem is, in the all-inclusive waffly language of today, what does "vegetarian" even mean? A deceptively simple question, and one theVegetarian Society firmly addresses, defining a veggie as someone who lives on a diet of grains, pulses, nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruits with, or without, the use of dairy products and eggs