11 hours Ago By [email protected] (Moriah House)
Chicken can often feel like the default animal protein in the United States. Almost every restaurant menu includes at least a handful of chicken dishes, and is a dinner staple stateside. (It seems the phrase "winner, winner, chicken dinner" exists for a reason.
) Despite the American obsession with poultry, the most consumed meat in the world is surprisingly not chicken. On a global scale, the most consumed meat is : pork. Pork accounts for roughly 36% of total global meat consumption, according to data collected by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and shared by the .
Poultry takes a close second at 33%, followed by beef at 24%, and goats and sheep bring up the rear with a respectable 5%. Unsurprisingly, given our love for , chicken is the most popular meat in the U.S.
Data by shows that the average American consumed 102.1 pounds of broiler chicken in 2024 and 59.2 pounds of beef, the second most popular meat.
Pork was the third most popular with Americans consuming 50.7 pounds per capita. Demand for pork and beef has actually been on the decline stateside in recent years.
(By many measures, .) However, the rest of the world more than compensates for our lack of pork consumption. Why pork is so popular For fried chicken chain-obsessed, burger-loving Americans, the fact that pork is the most consumed meat in the world may come as a bit of a surprise, especially considering that billions of people do not consume pork for religious or cultural reasons.
However, there are plenty of people that do eat pork, and lots of it. According to , in 2022, the average Chinese person consumed 88.62 pounds of pork.
also reported that, during this year, the average Chinese person ate 38.58 pounds of chicken. That's compared to the 65.
26 pounds of pork and the 116.91 pounds of chicken Americans ate per capita during this year. When you take into account that China is home to 1.
4 billion people, over quadruple the population of the United States, pork's dominance on a global scale starts to make a lot more sense. (It makes even more sense when you learn that countries including Spain, Montenegro, and Croatia consumed more than 120 pounds of pork per capita during 2022.) The reason people eat so much pork is pretty simple.
Pig meat is a relatively affordable, nutritious, and versatile animal protein option that has been widely consumed by humans worldwide for thousands of years. From Spanish-style hams to Korean bossam, pork forms the base of beloved staple dishes in many cultures across the globe. Although chicken remains in competition with pork for the title of the world's most consumed meat, it's safe to say that people will be enjoying plenty of pork in all it's delicious forms for the foreseeable future.
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