Changes

I've only been Orthodox for about 3 years and this is the first Lent that I've really felt I had the strength and discipline to follow the fast strictly. I'm actually finding it a lot easier than I expected, but I have a question about the calendar, which nobody has ever answered for me: is there a heirarchy of foods or not and if so what is it? What I mean is, if my calendar says dairy products are fine, is fish also? - i.e is there a heirarchy like so:

Or is each type of food considered separately? I tend to treat fish days as days without dairy and dairy days as days without fish, but I'm not sure if this is correct or not. I realise that the worth of the fast is in its spirit and not following the letter of the law, so to speak, but it would be useful to know what the letter actually is. Whatever the answer, I think it would be useful to see it added to this page because I've found that nothing on the internet appears to cover this. [[User:James|James]]