Meat

Humans have been carnivores since at least 9000 BC, when they began eating sheep and goats. Pork wasn't consumed for another 2,000 years, with the husbandry of cattle beginning about 6500 BC. Today, however, there's been a reappraisal of the dietary importance of meat: for some, health concerns, such as high cholesterol levels, and environmental ethics may far outweigh meat's value as a source of protein. Regional preferences, religion and climate greatly influence a culture's cuisine. The consumption of horse, goat, reindeer, rabbit, reptiles and insects can be traced specifically back to culture and geography. National and regional preferences have been evolving for millennia, leaving us with the current preponderance of pork consumed in China, mutton and lamb in the Middle East, goat in the Caribbean and beef in Europe and America.

Modern cattle, sheep and pigs are well fleshed compared with their forebears of a couple of centuries ago. Animals have only been reared exclusively for food since the late 1800s. Before that time, beef and mutton were tough, fatty, expensive and probably strongly flavored. Candles were made from beef and mutton fat, another reason to keep the animals plump. Moreover, sheep were bred primarily for their leather and wool, slaughtered only after they were no longer able to provide these, at which point they'd become mutton. Cattle or oxen were originally raised primarily as beasts of burden.

According to a 2002 study from the University of Arkansas, meat consumption has increased 32 percent over the last 40 years. In that year, consumers ate more meat than in any other year in history: the total annual consumption per capita in the U.S. of red meat and poultry was about 219 pounds (99 kg).

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