I mean beef has somewhat remained the same or even slighlty dropped. so I guess it mighr have to do with the fact that poultry is the cheapest of the meats?
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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I didn't exist in 1961, I do eat more chicken than when I did not exist though.
Eventually I will stop eating chicken for good
According to ourworldindata.org, chicken meat production reached over 128 millions tonnes a year worldwide in 2024.
Chickens a typically slaughtered when they reach 5 to 7 lbs. That would be around 48.5 billions chickens a year... or 1.5 thousands every single second.
Humans are fucking sick.
Chicken is literally a quarter of the price of beef, of course people are eating more chicken. Just a reminder meatloaf, which would now cost at least $15 to feed a family of four, used to be one of the cheapest meals. And outside the anglosphere more people are able to afford meat at all, and chicken and pork are the meats of choice for the world because of their incredibly low cost and relatively low environmental impact; modern cooking techniques and knowledge also pretty much entirely eliminates the risk of food-born illness from historically famously risky sources.
Chickens can also be raised with very little land and just some basic resources. Cows need large amounts of pasture, barns, special equipment, etc.
I'm curious about the opposite statistic now. Presumably, the number of people eaten by chickens wasn't and isn't zero.
Huh, I'm eating less meat than I ever have. Shit's expensive plus stuff like garbanzo beans are surprisingly tasty and protein packed. Plus, it's way healthier for you.
For me, when I had no money, it was pulses (garbanzos and lentils, mainly), brown rice and fish. I lived in a town with a fishing port, and back then everyone was barely getting by, so prices weren't bad. But those same sand dabs I used to buy off the boat, cleaned, 4 for a dollar, are nowhere near as cheap now. And there is no fishing fleet there anymore, it's become a yacht marina.
Anyway I've moved on and am living in another country. Here, the low-food-mile, low-cost options are different. And my consumption of red meat is on the order of once a week. I'm not a big fan of chicken, but still have fish when I'm motivated to visit the fishmonger.
Black beans and rice is a good combo, complimentary proteins too!
I think you have to combine it with other foods to get a complete protein.
Pulses plus grains give you the right set of amino acids to make proteins.
Yes, and some meat is necessary to obtain vitamin B12.
why eat animals that have been fed b12 supplements when you can just take the b12 supplements yourself?
I can get a 1-year supply of B12 for like $3 or something. It's a solved problem.
Animal meat naturally has b12. In the old days, animals weren't fed b12 supplement.
no animal produces b12 - it all comes from soil bacteria - which is why grass fed ruminants have b12
but practically no modern day meat farm relies on grass feeding only - even the "grass fed" get the bulk of their calories via feed (and therefore take b12 supplements)
if you're arguing that we should go back to "the olden days" - meaning no more than 20% of your yearly calories being meat - or eating meat about once a week - then please don't let me stop you - but at that point I'd much rather take my b12 supplements and not have to needlessly kill animals 🤷♀️
Non-ruminants including fish also have vitamin b12. I mentioned the old days to show that people then survived eating animals without b12 supplements. But in those days animals roamed more freely. As long as people eat a healthy diet, I'm fine. I just don't want anyone to be like that girl in an article trending in this community who died from b12 deficiency.
Not eating meat AT ALL is such a novel thing for human gastroevolution that I personally prefer to wait 5k years or so to see the outcomes before commiting. That includes eating diet supplements, who might or might not work.
There have been cultures in certain blue zones like in Okinawa where people traditionally ate very little meat.
Less than 1% of their diet was fish; less than 1% of their diet was meat, and same with dairy and eggs, so it was more than 96% plant-based, and more than 90% whole food plant based—very few processed foods either. And, not just whole food plant-based, but most of their diet was vegetables, and one vegetable in particular—sweet potatoes. The Okinawan diet was centered around purple and orange sweet potatoes
Also adventist vegetarians in California:
The plant-based nature of the diet may trump the caloric restriction, though, since the one population that lives even longer than the Okinawa Japanese don’t just eat a 98% meat-free diet, they eat 100% meat-free. The Adventist vegetarians in California, with perhaps the highest life expectancy of any formally described population.
Adventist vegetarian men and women live to be about 83 and 86, comparable to Okinawan women, but better than Okinawan men. The best of the best were Adventist vegetarians who had healthy lifestyles too, like being exercising nonsmokers, 87 and nearly 90, on average. That’s like 10 to 14 years longer than the general population. Ten to 14 extra years on this Earth from simple lifestyle choices. And, this is happening now, in modern times, whereas Okinawan longevity is now a thing of the past. Okinawa now hosts more than a dozen KFCs. Their saturated fat tripled. They went from eating essentially no cholesterol to a few Big Macs’ worth, tripled their sodium, and are now just as potassium deficient as Americans, getting less than half of the recommended minimum daily intake of 4,700 mg a day. In two generations, Okinawans have gone from the leanest Japanese to the fattest
Source : https://youtu.be/mryzkO5QWWY
Adventist vegetarian men and women live to be about 83 and 86, comparable to
Study: www.medicosadventistas.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Ten-years-of-life-Is-it-a-matter-of-choice.pdf
Ignoring fact, that the study was a self-questionaire, performed 40 years ago, and did not check if the Adventist do continue the healthy habits; with all the goodwill that I can muster:
- vegetarians are defined as eating meat no more than once a month, semivegetarians no more than once a week
- no vegans
- each of life expectancy markers yield statistically same result 1.5-2.5 years: not smoking, medium bmi, exercise, eating nuts, being vegetarian.
I am plant-based myself (the study would mark me as semivegetarian). I am very careful about proclaiming that meat is unhealthy in any dose, because that's not how humans evolved for the past 300 000 years.
Self-questionnaires
How else do you plan on tracking 34000's peoples diet for 12 years? Lock them in a lab?
40 years ago
How else would you measure life expectancy accurately? You you must track people until a statistically significant portion of them die.
and did not check if the Adventist do continue the healthy habits
I don't really understand how statistically this would matter. They had a large enough study group , tracked them for 12 years and isolated the variables.
each of life expectancy markers yield statistically same result 1.5-2.5 years: not smoking, medium bmi, exercise, eating nuts, being vegetarian.
Yeah and I never claimed it was only cuz of not eating meat.
I am very careful about proclaiming that meat is unhealthy in any dose, because that’s not how humans evolved for the past 300 000 years.
Why do you think natural selection optimizes humans for longevity? (living 85 years free of chronic disease). Evolution just optimizes for survival to reproductive age and successful child bearing.
Just because humans can digest meat and relied on it for survival in harsh conditions does not biologically mean a meat-heavy diet is the optimal fuel for a 90-year lifespan in a modern environment with caloric abundance.
How else do you plan on tracking 34000’s peoples diet for 12 years? Lock them in a lab?
Track local shop data what sales there to double check if people are not lying.
You you must track people until a statistically significant portion of them die.
That's my point - they didn't repeat the questionaire every x years. They didn't check if self-reported habits changed. What they in fact measured is "if people in the ~30 have those habits, what is their life expectancy". Heck, for all we know, at 40 they all became cat eaters or smthing.
Yeah and I never claimed it was only cuz of not eating meat.
That's how I read your previous comment.
Why do you think natural selection optimizes humans for longevity? (living 85 years free of chronic disease). Evolution just optimizes for survival to reproductive age and successful child bearing.
That's not what I meant. I meant that our digestive system is optimized for (some) meat intake - see e.g. iron and meat effect on iron absorption (from measly 1% non-heme iron to whooping ~15% non-heme iron absorption if meat is present in the dish).
a meat-heavy diet is bad for life expectancy
We agree on that, sorry if that wasn't clear.
I can safely say this is an underestimation. I ate exactly 0 (zero) chickens in 1961 on account of not having been conceived yet. I eat more than 6 * 0 chickens now.
I’m doing my best, but I wasn’t alive in 1961.
Then you're eating infinitely more Chicken than you were in 1961. Keep up the good work.
Of course we are, beef has become unaffordable to the masses.
Beef was not cheap in 1961. At least, not for most people. The American everything-with-meat diet started basically as conspicuous consumption, because living on gruel and forage (mostly in the old country, but also the Depression) was in living memory.
This stat probably reflects that most of the world isn't on the edge of starvation anymore, like it was in 1961. (Now it's just a notable minority)
I wonder how much of it might also have been to deliberately show off American wealth compared to communist countries during the cold war. Like the whole comparisons of having shelves of different brands of the same food.
Well, there's no real reason to think it was a forced meme, as opposed to just people living it up when they suddenly could, and it started well before the Cold War. When you watch something set in the Old West, and they're driving cattle east, that's what it was about. It's worth saying it was cheap-er in America than Europe or the undeveloped world, with all that freshly "cleared" land to graze on. Still more expensive than plant crops, though.
There's a few sides to the Soviet shopping thing. Price controls in the USSR meant that the shopping experience was very different in general. You could afford everything, but anything unusual or desirable tended to sell out immediately. There were indeed empty shelves as a result, although on a rotating basis. Later on, as the system was collapsing, that became permanently empty shelves. People in the West tend to conflate the two, and the famines that happened before the space race period, 'cause propaganda. (There also were no one-stop-shops, and everything was behind the counter and collected by staff, but that's a digression)
On the other end, there just were a lot more food categories in the West, and the USSR itself acknowledged it. There, a new product couldn't exist until some government boss sponsored a project to create it, and fudge pops or whatever probably weren't front of mind for what the Union needed. They spent a lot of time copying Western consumer products as a result. When it came to military equipment or civilian infrastructure, where the requirements are more concrete, they did far better.
There’s a few sides to the Soviet shopping thing. Price controls in the USSR meant that the shopping experience was very different in general. You could afford everything, but anything unusual or desirable tended to sell out immediately.
Yes, it was pretty typical. People had money, but couldn't spend it. Rents were super cheap as well. So cheap they didn't even cover the maintenance costs of buildings.
not only is chicken cheaper, it's healthier. so maybe that also has something to do with it?
i hope as humanity advances, it would be nice to see technological advances in meat alternatives rather than farming chickens. i love eating meat, but damn is it inhumane and inefficient
Also the rise of all the chicken sandwich shops. I imagine their waste is is considered “consumption”, too.
It isn't that surprising. Humans have gotten very good at raising chickens in the past 60 years.
I saw videos of chickens from the 1900s. My word. They were a fraction of the size today.
If your take is that it's better now because it's bigger, then it's a wrong take. Heritage chicken is vastly healthier than broiler.
It's just Chickens Georg who eats 10,000 chickens daily and offsets the average for everyone.
Perhaps, eating insects might be a solution.
Maybe stop eating animals?
Eating some meat is required to get vitamin B12.
Nope. The animals geht b12 supplements too, why not direct for us then.
Animal meat naturally has b12. In the old days, animals weren't fed b12 supplement.
Animals meant for food arent living in conditions to gain b12 naturally. They get supplements. Humans could take it directly and save the extra step animal.
True but some people like its taste. Some nutritionists tout the Mediterranean diet. Governments could encourage people to eat insects. They could fund chefs to create recipes.
We aren't living in the old days
Yes, farm animals now live in enclosed environments.
Which is probably why insectivory hasn't caught on. If the West could adapt to sushi it could adapt to mopane worms, but in the 80's or whatever vegetarianism was still a joke. Now it's influential.