The 1940-1950 era is the rough timeframe when the factory farming of poultry took off, especially once antibiotics started being widely used to group even more chickens together in those factory conditions. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_the_United_States_poultry_farming_industry#History_of_federal_policy_on_antibiotic_use_in_livestock

Lamb is at 0 lbs/y? I find that and turkey to be suspiciously low

I had to reread your comment like 5 times because I kept reading "chickpeas" instead of "chickens"

Apparently so, but there is a wide variance in American diets. I wouldn’t be surprised if the biggest meat eaters are skewing that data quite a bit.

It’s not exact, but I just did a tally of the meat I’ve bought in the last year and it’s about 20 lbs. I could’ve forgotten something, and had a handful of meals out, so I’ll round up to 25lbs to be safe. Totally anecdotal, but 9% of the average listed here. I know I’m on the low end, but for most of my family I’d be pretty shocked if they ate over 3lb a week, or ~150lbs a year.

I live in the south and it seems like about half the people I meet eat more along the lines of what seems normal to me for someone eating meat, anywhere from 4-10x a week. A lot of those outside of dinners can be very small amounts of meat.

The other half unfortunately seem to be the type that consider it a tough challenge when they stop eating meat at every single meal, and it’s often at least 30% of their meal. It’s wild.

There might be a number of factors, but most notably, beef prices started to rise and people switched to other meats, also 2003, 05 and 06 marked the first 3 documented outbreaks of mad cow disease in the US.

Thanks to Oprah

TIL Americans fucking loooove chicken