Varieties of Meat

Various kinds of meat being cooked on a grill.

Meat, in its broadest definition, is food. In modern English usage, most often it refers to animal tissue used as food, mostly skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also refer to organs, including lungs, livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, and a variety of other internal organs as well as blood. The word meat is also used by the meat packing and butchering industry in a more restrictive sense - the flesh of mammalian species (pigs, cattle, etc.) raised and butchered for human consumption, to the exclusion of fish, poultry, and eggs. Eggs and seafood are rarely referred to as meat even though they consist of animal tissue. Animals that consume only, or mostly animals are called carnivores.

Through most of human history, individual families of humans hunted, raised, and slaughtered animals for their meat, and later, as civilizations developed, priests and temple assistants performed the functions of slaughtering and butchering animals for food in animal sacrifice. Today, in most industrialized nations, a meat packing industry slaughters, processes, and distributes meat for human consumption.

Etymology

The word meat comes from the Old English word mete, which referred to food in general. Mad in Danish, mat in Swedish and Norwegian, and matur in Icelandic, still mean 'food'. The narrower sense that refers to meat as not including fish, developed over the past few hundred years and has religious influences. The distinction between fish and "meat" is codified by Jewish laws of kashrut regarding the mixing of milk and meat, which does not forbid the mixing of milk and fish. Modern halakha (Jewish law) on kashrut classifies the flesh of both mammals and birds as "meat"; fish are considered to be parve (also spelled parev, pareve; Yiddish: ?????? parev), neither meat nor a dairy food. The Catholic dietary restriction to "meat" on Fridays also does not apply to the cooking and eating of fish.

Processed meat in American grocery store

Ethical issues regarding the consumption of meat can include objections to the act of killing animals or the agricultural practices surrounding the production of meat. Reasons for objecting to the practice of killing animals for consumption may include animal rights, environmental ethics, religious doctrine, or an aversion to inflicting pain or harm on other living creatures. The religion of Jainism has always opposed eating meat, and there are also many schools of Buddhism and Hinduism that condemn the eating of meat. Some people, while not vegetarians, refuse to eat the flesh of certain animals due to cultural taboo, such as cats, dogs, horses, or rabbits. In some cases, specific meats (especially from pigs and cows) are forbidden within religious traditions. Some people eat only the flesh of animals who they believe have not been mistreated, and abstain from the meat of animals reared in factory farms or from particular products such as foie gras and veal. Others believe that the treatment which animals undergo in the production of meat and animal products obliges them never to eat meat or use animal products.

In vitro and imitation meat

Main articles: Imitation meat, In vitro meat

Various forms of imitation meat have been created to satisfy some vegetarians' and vegan's taste for the flavor and texture of meat, there is also some speculation about the possibility of growing in vitro meat from animal tissue. Nutrition wise, imitation meat is comparable to animal meat, however they rarely contain the same levels of saturated fat and can often contain valuable minerals and vitamins while still containing approximately the same levels of protein as animal meats.^[15]

Environmental impact

Main article: Environmental effects of meat production

The use of large industrial monoculture that is common in industrialised agriculture, typically for feed crops such as corn and soy is more damaging to ecosystems than more sustainable farming practices such as organic farming, permaculture, arable, pastoral, and rain-fed agriculture.

Animals fed on grain and those which rely on grazing need more water than grain crops.^[16] According to the USDA, growing crops for farm animals requires nearly half of the U.S. water supply and 80% of its agricultural land. Animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90% of the soy crop, 80% of the corn crop, and 70% of its grain.^[17] In tracking food animal production from the feed through to the dinner table, the inefficiencies of meat, milk and egg production range from a 4:1 energy input to protein output ratio up to 54:1.^[18] The result is that producing animal-based food is typically much less efficient than the harvesting of grains, vegetables, legumes, seeds and fruits, though this might not be largely true for animal husbandry in parts of the developing world where factory farming is almost non existent, making animal based food much more sustainable.

See also

Food portal

• Slaughterhouse
• Bushmeat
• Livestock/Domestication
• Food science
• Gristle
• Hormonal meat
• List of meat animals
• Culinary name
• Vegetarianism/Veganism/Ethics of eating meat
• Sinew
• Red meat/White meat

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Meats

Wikibooks Cookbook has an article on

Meat

• American Meat Science Association website
• Qualitionary - Legal Definitions - Meat

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