The amazing popularity of chicken

If you asked people (meat eaters) what meat they most often eat, it wouldn’t be surprising if they answered “chicken.” But, even so, we were really surprised with the information in Fooducate’s article “Are Chickens Taking Over the World?” They, in turn, referred to an article in Mother Jones, Has the World Reached Peak Chicken?, which included a number of charts and the following statistics. We found these to be particularly eye-opening:

• At any given minute, there are 6 chickens in some U.S. farm for every single American.
• The most popular form of chicken purchased is “further processed” as opposed to whole or cut in parts  (think Chicken McNuggets).
• Americans eat 79 billion eggs a year.
• From 1970 to 2008, the world’s people population has grown 80%; the domesticated chicken population has grown 262%.

And we’ll add one more statistic from the EYB library – there are 386 books in our library that are devoted exclusively to cooking chicken. 

Photo of Buttermilk Roast Chicken by Deb Perelman at Smitten Kitchen