Meat   The actual word ‘meat’ didn’t actually come to be used to describe the flesh of animals until around 1300, until which time it was generally accepted to mean any type of solid food, as opposed to drink. The whole subject of meat-eating has become quite an emotive one in recent years, with a varied range of arguments being produced by those against. The more scientific points out that evidence exists that proto-human, like the apes, ate a basic fruit diet; that we only started to exhibit ominiverous feeding patterns after the emergence of Homo Erectus. The religious moralists add the argument that, according to the Bible, before Adam and Eve’s fall from Grace, they were given herbs, fruits and seeds as foods, and that it was not until after the Great Flood that Man was given ‘everything that liveth’ as meat, in recognition of his base nature. For the opposite lobby, some nutritionists point out that animal proteins supply us with similar and higher quality essential amino acids, needed to provide the proteins required by the body. It also provides us with iron, Vitamin A and some of the Vitamin B group. Strong evidence does exist that early Man was a hunter-gatherer and primitive hunting tools have been found which date back some 15 million years, although the weapons capable of dealing with the larger game didn’t appear until around 1 million years ago, and it is generally accepted that our ancestors were largely opportunistic meat-eaters. The change came in the Neolithic period when agriculture was born. Strains of the grain families and some legumes began to be cultivated, attracting animals like sheep and goats. Such ruminants are timid and easily controlled, can digest the cellulose from discarded stalks, posing little competition for the food needs of the early settlements, with the added bonus of providing milk and wool and hides in payment. The earliest evidence of domestic sheep have been found at sites in Iraq, dated at around 9,000BC, and evidence of goat-keeping has been found at Jericho and dated at 7,000BC. Dogs and pigs, attracted by the inevitable waste matter from such communities, would have followed, and would have had to be brought under control to prevent danger to the settlement. Canine remains have been found in Iran which date back to 9,500Bc, and it is thought that they were probably bred as much for a convenient source of food as a hunting aid. Dog was still a meat animal during the Classical period, enjoyed by both the Greeks and Romans and Hippocrates, the ‘Father of Modern Medicine’ remarked that he found the meat light and nourishing - as do some Far-Eastern societies, even today. The Romans also ‘battery’ bred dormice, which they enjoyed enormously, to ensure a constant supply and Apicius, the only cookbook to survive from the period, includes a recipes for the rodent, cooked with pork meat, pepper, pine kernels, asafoetida and liquamen. South America seemed to have a limited supply of animal protein; the llama having been used almost exclusively for transport and the alpacca for wool, their principal food animal would seem to have been the guinea pig. Ancient texts mention a great many exotic roast meats, usually at grand banquets, and always to underline the great wealth or importance of the dignitaries being described. Such delicacies would have been the preserve of the privileged few, the masses existing on a basic diet of grain breads, porridges and gruels. Approximate Dates for Animal Domestication Animal B.C Region Sheep round 9,000 Middle East Dog 8,400 Eurasia, North America Goat 7,500 Middle East Pig 7,000 Middle East Cattle 6,500 Middle East Guinea Pig 6,000 South America Horse 3,000 Northeastern Europe Chicken 2,000 India Most historians agree that the human diet from 1400 to 1800 was essentially a vegetarian one throughout most of the world for purely economic reasons: crops can feed up to 20 times the number of population than can be suppported by the animals grazing on the same acreage. The main exception to this rule was in Europe, where a great deal of meat was eaten during the Middle Ages. It is thought that the relatively low population density, together with the availability of a vast amount of high-quality pasturage, may have gone a long way to accounting for this. However, the population growth from around the 17th century onwards put meat consumption back with the upper classes and during the 17th and 18th centuries, the average European was down to an average of around 10% of their calorie intake coming from meats, much of this salted, as they became more expensive. North Americans, coming largely from this European stock, shared this meat passion and the abundance of natural game stocks in the New World did nothing to impede the growth in its consumption. And grow it did. The per capita average annual meat consumption of Americans during the decade 1830-1840 was 178lb (80.6kg), with salt pork becoming the staple for the masses instead of grain products. The phrase ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ was coined during this time, referring to the barrels in which the pork was stored. The late 20th century saw a dramatic fall in the consumption of red meat, whilst poultry use has boomed, bolstered by high yielding factory methods which has brought down the cost of raising chickens in large numbers. Economically, however, it still remains a luxury foodstuff. Even today, it takes 900g (2lb) of grain to produce 450g (1lb) of chicken meat, with ratios of 4 to 1 for pork and 8 to 1 for beef. Small wonder, then, that those in the business of mass meat production have, at times, resorted to sometimes scandalous methods of improving the balance sheets. Although medical evidence points strongly in the direction that some meat product consumption is necessary for a healthy, balanced diet, recent research suggests that the average westerner still eats around twice the amount of protein they need for healthy maintenance, most of this coming from red meats, dairy products and eggs. Meat does benefit from ‘ageing’. Historically, meat, especially that from game animals, has been seen to improve in flavour and tenderness after a period of ‘hanging’ or storage after slaughter. It is thought that this is due to a process within the meat tissue whereby the lactic acid, which accumulates in the tissue after death, begins to break down the walls of the cells within the meat which store protein-attacking enzymes. Flavour changes caused by this process are thought to be caused by the resultant degredation of the meat’s proteins into their basic amino acids, which usually have a strong flavour. By means of a similar process, the muscle filaments also start to disintegrate, causing the meat to become more tender. The process is, of course, also known as decomposition, and earlier fashions, especially in early French cuisine, would sometimes see things taken as far as actual putrefaction before the meat was used. Meat has even been used in country medicine: chicken fat was rubbed onto burns and scalds and freshly killed, warm chicken flesh was used as a styptic to staunch heavy bleeding. And, of course, who hasn’t heard of using a fresh beefsteak to ease a black eye - although I would far rather see it grilled lightly with olive oil and roast garlic, served with a crisp, mixed salad!