A lot of meat and poultry gets eaten during the holiday season. Did you ever find yourself wondering: Hmm, what’s the trend line over the past 100 years for U.S. per-capita consumption of beef vs. chicken vs. pork vs. turkey?
Yeah, so did we. The answers lie below the fold. Before you peek, here are a few more meaty questions to consider:
- Which category was consumed at a clip of just 10 lbs. per person 100 years ago but has since risen to 60 lbs. per person? And what accounts for this spike?
- Which category has reigned supreme from the early 1950′s, peaking at nearly 90 lbs. per person during the late 1970′s – but has recently been pretty much matched by the category in question 1?
- Which category has been remarkably consistent for the entire century, with consumption usually between 40 and 50 lbs. per year?
- Which category has always been the laggard – and yet has climbed from just a couple of pounds a year to well above 10?
The answers appear in the illustrated edition of SuperFreakonomics:
Over the past few decades, Americans have been eating less red meat and a lot more chicken. (Turkey consumption, meanwhile, has been on a slow and steady upward path, while pork has remained consistent.) The beef industry, troubled by this trend, funded research to find out why. It turns out that the public began to increasingly see beef as a health risk, thanks to recalls of tainted beef and a growing belief in the connection between red-meat consumption and heart disease. There’s likely another reason: more women were entering the workforce. A study by the agricultural economists James Mintert, Glynn Tonsor, and Ted Schroeder found that for every 1 percent increase in female employment, beef consumption sank by .6 percent while chicken consumption rose by .6 percent. Why? Probably because beef takes longer than chicken to prepare, and because poultry producers did a good job marketing cheap and ready-to-cook chicken products. Furthermore, all those working women meant more household income, which meant more families eating in restaurants – where meals are less likely to contain beef than meals at home.
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I don’t know about eating out at restaurants (only once or twice a month) but at home, yeah, the bag of frozen boneless/skinless chicken breasts is are staple meat, followed up by hamburger, and then steaks and pork products and salmon once a week.
Ease of use is the main thing with the chicken; we both work 9 hour days (real wages haven’t increased in our lifetime so must work longer) and don’t need to remember to move frozen steak over the night before using it. Also, doctors are recommending skinless chicken/olive oil for main meat consumption. 3 breasts in the skillet with lid on, some veggies in another skillet and then rice/pasta/potatoes can all be started in 15 minutes. Gives us time to sit down with daughter and go over day/homework, etc.
Minor guess – we have a lot more immigrants from places where chicken are plentiful but beef are rare, or that don’t eat beef at all – the Caribbean and South Asia.
Chicken also looks to have really taken off in the 40′s and 50′s, perhaps due to the advent of fast-food chicken like KFC (1952) and Chick-Fil-A (1967) to compliment burgers.
these articles and these books are pop science. selective correlation, selective evidence..blah blah. Provide a universe of facts on a topic and present it in a consumable way rather than the glib, dual income; eat out, no red meat in restaurant food story???? who buys that.
Its more likely a demand supply, relative cost issue. Also demographics have changed over time and diet awareness has changed.
NONE of these factors have been addressed.
FAIL.
What I am curious about is, why is chicken easier to prepare than beef?
Now, you can often get irradiated beef, which makes it easier to cook. Additionally, beef has to reach a lower temperature to be cooked at a “safe” level than chicken. Therefore, it usually (of course depending on what you’re making) takes less time to cook beef.
Maybe that’s just me.
-Greg
This is good news because chicken has a far lower green house gas footprint than beef. Cattle are major producers of Methane which is much stronger GHG than carbon dioxide. A Scientific American article listed the footprint of beef as 13 times that of chicken. Sheep are also major methane producers, but mutton doesn’t seem popular with Americans.
Overall, if you sum all these values, it appears that protein consumption per capita is on the rise. Both chicken and turkey show exponential growth, pork is flat. Beef is declining slightly. We’re eating more meat is what I get from this and, in an attempt to be more healthy about it, we’re eating more chicken and turkey, less beef. Correlation to obesity?
“i honestly think beef’s main downfall is the real or perceived health risk associated with it.”
This times 1000. Red meat’s image was a casualty of the “low fat” hype of the last 15-20 years or so.
I’m a little confused by the claim that beef takes longer to prepare than chicken. In my experience, it depends entirely on the recipe and manner of cooking. A hamburger is certainly quicker than fried chicken, stir-frying either takes the same time, while a roast chicken takes about the same time as a beef roast of the same weight.
Like several others, I’ve also noticed the gradual impoverishment of diet choices. Lamb is rare, mutton unheard of. Haven’t seen rabbit in this country for years, or buffalo, venison, etc. And I could almost write a book on the fruits & vegetables that are no longer available in mainstream stores.