Why do people across the world mostly only eat a few of the same types of meat (like chicken, beef, pork) when there are thousands of other animals to choose from?
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It’s all to do with cost, the ability to control the animal, and how easy they are to reproduce. Placid and cheaply fed animals were chosen because they’re easy to mass produce. Trying to breed porcupines to eat for example is a bloody nightmare
Pretty much any animal that’s widespread and edible and someone will have tried to eat it at some point.
But most animals aren’t domesticated. You can eat crocodile but you can’t farm crocodiles so good luck getting enough crocodile meat to sell it at McDonalds. Also means you’ll have more trouble breeding them. The chickens and pigs and cows we have now have been bred to be as tasty as possible.
At least in the US its mostly just self perpetuating market cycle. People eat a ton of hamburgers, so lots of cows are farmed, and ground beef is relatively cheap. A meat like mutton is very rarely eaten, as a consequence its very difficult to find and quite expensive. These just largely become feedback loops.
Cheap and plentiful meat comes from domesticated animals. Chickens, in particular, are small, cheap to feed, can be housed in simple sheds where they are sheltered from the climate, and grow quickly, making them especially easy to raise for food.
However, there are a few other animals that have been domesticated that have regional appeal. It depends a lot on geography. At one time agriculture was less sophisticated and you needed to raise animals that thrived in your area / climate. The recipes and traditional included food, and even when it becomes possible to add a new species into the mix, there’s no point because there’s not a market for it.
Almost all matters of traditional cuisine originate from the same cause: trying not to starve. Every pre-industrial society got gud at figuring out how to make local flora and fauna edible, then palatable, then delicious, and occasionally amazing. While people all over the world generally (but by no means entirely) agree that Micky D’s hamburders are yum, thousands of years of “home cooking” are not erased by a couple generations of cheap “salt + umami” gunk.
Globalisation, and “big food”. Globalisation has lead to an increase in the countries producing limited types of goods. Foods especially.
Let’s see. You need to find an animal not dangerous to human beings domesticated so you can harvest them. You need to have an animal that is not adorable in the common sense because you need to slaughter them. You need to have an animal that tastes good. That eliminates a lot of potential animals.
Just call the whole thing off and make soybean burgers. Or imitation egg omelets. Or Buddhist vegetarian inspired meat dishes.
https://www.foodandwine.com/cooking-techniques/plant-based-meat-china-taiwan-buddhist-vegetarian
The real question is why we dont eat more insect protein. Dont get me wrong I’m as disgusted at the thought as most of you are I’m sure.
But isn’t it bizarre that such a high protein source that is prevelant isn’t being majorly consumed?
We have all been conditioned to find bugs disgusting.
Just saying.
Fun fact: guinea pigs were bred as a food animal in Central America.
Modern sensibilities see them as pets and recoil from eating them.
A lot of the lines we draw are cultural and arbitrary.
However:
1. There are a limited number of species that can be domesticated
2. Of those, there’s often a cultural taboo to keep desperate people from slaughtering livestock for meat that are needed for dairy or labor.
3. Not all species are good at converting waste calories or inedible grass into tasty meat. (It’s only in modern times of overabundance that we devote vast tracts of land to growing food for livestock to eat.)
Cost, availability, habit.
I eat what I grew up eating because I have a taste for those things. Eating other things is strange, perhaps good, but strange.
What I grew up eating is based on what is available, both in terms of my families finances, and what is grown in my area.
All of those reinforce each other. What people eat more of drives the price, drives the availability, makes it more likely more people will also eat it.
Dingo may be delicious, but I will never know because it cost $80lb and requires I go to dirty areas of the internet to get. Where chicken is $1/lb and literally everywhere.
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