Yes, absolutely.
A perfect example is beef which in North America is either corn fed or grain fed. Having grown up on grain fed beef, I can almost not eat corn based beef at all.
What animals eat with change the fat composition and flavour profile pretty dramatically. Deer, pigs and people all taste very different depending on what they eat, how old they are, general health of the animal etc.
10-15 years ago in Minnesota, there was a news article about a new regulation for how long chicken manure had to be kept at an elevated temperature before it could be fed to cows (to keep bacteria from growing in the chicken manure). My thought was, why are they feeding chicken manure to cows?! I have noticed a taste and smell of excrement to some meats and wonder if this is related.
Supporting google search below.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=feeding+chicken+manure+to+cattle&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS800US800&oq=feeding+chicken+manu&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l6.4167j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8](https://www.google.com/search?q=feeding+chicken+manure+to+cattle&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS800US800&oq=feeding+chicken+manu&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l6.4167j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
Yes, and the colour.
A chicken fed corn or maize will have yellow meat (appears yellow before cooking) a hen with diet rich in maize will lay eggs with a red yolk.
Pigs or cattle that are fed kiwi fruit or pineapples for a few weeks before slaughter have a sweeter flavour and very tender meat.
I had goats that I fed silage to right up until they were slaughtered, they produced very dark meat with a bull-beef flavour. I prefer goat meat that was fed grass for several weeks before slaughter
I think strong flavoured foods are noticeable in the meat if it’s a major part of a diet, but not always directly tasting of the food they were fed. So I’ve had rose veal that definitely tastes of milk (which is its food). Pata negra pigs from Spain have a distinct nutty flavour from the acorns they consume. And I know of European mountain sheep that live mostly on herbs who’s milk (that is made in to a cheese) and meat tastes of the herbs. I don’t know if you could raise a chicken on garlic and thyme or pigs on apples and directly taste it though.
Kind of, but it wouldn’t work like that. The properties of a mushroom that makes it taste like a mushroom would be completely lost as the animal digested it and turned it into tissue. However, the general distribution of macronutrients matters. An animal fed a high-fat diet will have fattier meat, etc.
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