Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird

Author: Emelyn Rude

The numbers are staggering.  Across the globe a total of 27 billion chickens are eaten every year with Americans consuming an average of 90 pounds of chicken a year. Without a doubt, for most of our lifetime chicken has been the de facto meat on the table. However, it didn’t always use to be this way.  A couple of centuries ago, most Americans didn’t eat much chicken because it was too expensive. It wasn’t until the advent of incubators and large scale chicken farms that the bird became so affordable. Chicken farming has become so effective that it takes only 12 pounds of food to turn into 6 pounds of edible chicken with the whole process taking a little over 7 weeks.

This book takes you through the history of mankind and its intersection with chickens. For several thousand years it was just a niche item on the menu. It is only in the recent past that it is overtaken other livestock in becoming our principle protein. In 1985 chicken became more popular than pork and it is as recent as 1992, a mere 25 years ago, that it has overtaken beef in consumption.

Learn all about this and many more chicken tales in this book.