Meat used to be mostly a food for rare occasions and elites. Since when is it considered "normal" to eat meat on a daily in Western countries? How come?

by Topiaurore

I realise it has to do with industrialisation, adverts and probably the 20th century "green revolution" of agriculture. Still, it seems like the idea of eating daily meat as a norm is very strong in many Western societies, as if this had always been the case. How did this idea become so ingrained?

baquea

At least for New Zealand, you've actually got it backwards. In 1896, 91kg just of beef+mutton were eaten yearly per capita; in the 1930s it was 130kg of total meat per capita. By the 2000s, however, the total per capita consumption of meat had dropped to 91kg. It was not only normal to eat meat several times day a century ago, it was actually eaten more frequently than it was now (for instance cooked breakfasts were common then but not anymore).

I can't find earlier data for consumption but price data shows how meat really wasn't very expensive: in 1868 a pound of beef costed 5-7 pence compared to a farm labourer's daily wage of 4-6 shillings. That works out to ~22% of a labourer's wages to buy a kilogram of beef a day. By comparison, today a kilogram of stewing beef costs $22 compared to a daily median wage of $145 which works out to 15%. Slightly cheaper, but certainly nothing that is going to cause a drastic change in consumption.