What is the world’s favorite meat?
There is no single answer.
In the United States, poultry leads. In Argentina, beef is deeply embedded in both the food supply and national culture. Germany and China remain strongly associated with pork. Japan stands out for fish and seafood. Across parts of Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, sheep and goat meat play a much larger role than they do in most Western countries. (Our World in Data)
Put those differences on a world map and a remarkable food geography appears.
The pattern is shaped by far more than taste.
Religion matters.
Climate matters.
Agricultural land matters.
Income matters.
Coastlines matter.
And thousands of years of farming history still influence what ends up on people’s plates today.
What Does “Most Consumed” Actually Mean?
The map is based on FAO Food Balance data processed by Our World in Data.
For each country, FAO calculates how much food is available after considering domestic production, imports, exports, changes in stocks, animal feed, processing and other uses.
That amount is then divided by population to create a per-capita food-supply estimate.
The important word is supply.
These figures do not mean researchers followed every household and weighed the meat people actually ate.
Food discarded at restaurants, supermarkets or in people’s homes may still be included.
Our World in Data therefore warns that actual consumption can be lower than the food-supply figures. (Our World in Data)
The latest FAO Food Balance release provides internationally comparable data through 2023. (FAOHome)
Poultry Has Become One of the World’s Great Food Success Stories
One of the strongest colors on the map represents poultry.
Chicken dominates in countries as different as the United States and numerous nations across the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The United States provides a particularly clear example. Our World in Data’s latest comparison identifies chicken as America’s most prominent category in the meat-and-seafood breakdown. (Our World in Data)
Why has poultry become so widespread?
Chickens grow quickly, require relatively little land compared with cattle and can convert feed into edible meat efficiently.
Modern poultry farming can also operate almost anywhere if farms have access to grain, water, electricity and transportation.
That makes chicken much less geographically restricted than grazing animals.
Global chicken consumption has consequently expanded enormously. Our World in Data reports that the number of chickens slaughtered per person globally has roughly quadrupled since 1961. (Our World in Data)
Poultry has another major advantage: there are relatively few major religious prohibitions against eating chicken.
That makes it unusually transferable between cultures.
North America: Chicken Has Overtaken the Old Beef Image
The United States is often stereotyped as a nation of hamburgers and steaks.
Beef certainly remains enormously important.
Yet modern American food supply has shifted strongly toward poultry.
Chicken is inexpensive, versatile and heavily used in:
fast food,
restaurants,
home cooking,
processed meals
and prepared foods.
This reflects a broader global trend.
As poultry production became increasingly industrialized during the second half of the twentieth century, chicken became affordable enough to compete directly with traditional red meats.
The United States still has extraordinarily high total meat availability—about 122 kg per person in 2023, excluding seafood—but poultry now occupies the leading position among the major categories. (Our World in Data)
Argentina: Beef Country Still Exists
Argentina provides almost the opposite story.
Here, beef remains dominant.
Our World in Data notes that beef and buffalo meat account for more than half of Argentina’s per-capita meat supply. (Our World in Data)
That has deep geographical roots.
Argentina’s Pampas contain enormous expanses of productive grassland.
Before modern feedlots and global feed markets, those grasslands represented an extraordinary natural advantage for raising cattle.
Over generations, cattle became integrated into the country’s:
economy,
ranching culture,
exports
and cuisine.
The famous Argentine asado is therefore more than a popular meal.
It is the culinary expression of a landscape.
Argentina’s total meat supply reached roughly 115 kg per person in 2023, placing it among the world’s higher-consuming countries. (Our World in Data)
Why Beef Dominates Some Grassland Countries
Cattle require much more land and feed than chickens.
Historically, that made beef easiest to produce in places with extensive pasture.
Large grassland regions in countries such as:
Argentina,
Uruguay,
Brazil,
the United States,
Australia
and parts of Central Asia
created favorable conditions for cattle ranching.
Modern agriculture has reduced that dependency because feed crops can now be transported long distances.
Still, historic cattle regions retain strong beef cultures.
Food traditions tend to survive long after the original economic conditions that created them.
Pork Forms Another Huge Global Belt
One of the map’s most important categories is pork.
Pork dominates across substantial portions of Europe and East Asia.
Germany is a well-known European example.
China is the global heavyweight.
Our World in Data describes China as a country where pig meat accounts for a very large share of per-capita meat consumption, historically around two-thirds in some comparisons. (Our World in Data)
Pigs are extremely effective farm animals in densely settled agricultural societies.
Unlike cattle, they do not require enormous pastures.
Historically, pigs could consume:
food scraps,
crop residues,
acorns,
roots
and other materials.
Modern pig farming instead relies heavily on concentrated grain and soybean feed.
This allowed enormous pork industries to develop in highly populated agricultural regions.
China and Pork: A Relationship Measured in Centuries
China’s association with pork is not a recent development.
Pig domestication and pig farming have existed in East Asia for thousands of years.
Pork became deeply integrated into Chinese cooking across many regions.
As China’s incomes increased dramatically during recent decades, meat consumption grew as well.
Our World in Data notes a strong international relationship between income and meat supply: wealthier populations generally consume more meat, although preferences differ sharply between cultures. (Our World in Data)
China’s economic transformation therefore did not create the country’s pork tradition.
It greatly expanded people’s ability to purchase a food that already had enormous cultural significance.
Why Pork Nearly Disappears Across Parts of the Middle East
Then the pork color abruptly weakens across much of North Africa and the Middle East.
This is one of the clearest examples of religion reshaping food geography.
Islam prohibits pork consumption.
Judaism also traditionally prohibits pork.
As a result, pork plays little or no role in food systems across many Muslim-majority countries.
Instead, poultry, beef, sheep and goat meat become much more important.
This demonstrates why food maps cannot be explained by economics alone.
A country can possess all the agricultural conditions needed to raise pigs and still consume very little pork because cultural and religious rules strongly discourage it.
Sheep and Goats Thrive Where Cattle Struggle
The green areas on the map—sheep and goat meat—often appear in landscapes associated with:
dry climates,
mountains,
semi-arid grasslands
and pastoral farming.
Sheep and goats are exceptionally useful in difficult environments.
They can graze or browse vegetation that would not support intensive cattle production.
That made them historically important across parts of:
Central Asia,
the Middle East,
North Africa,
East Africa
and mountainous regions elsewhere.
Mongolia is one of the world’s most striking examples of a livestock-heavy food system. Its total meat supply reached around 136 kg per person in 2023, one of the highest national values in FAO data. (Our World in Data)
Livestock pastoralism has been central to Mongolian life for centuries.
The landscape itself helped determine the diet.
Sheep and Goat Meat Carry a Pastoral History
Before trucks, supermarkets and refrigeration, people generally had to raise animals adapted to their immediate surroundings.
Cattle needed substantial grazing and water.
Pigs needed reliable food sources.
Sheep and goats could survive in harsher environments.
That made them critical to mobile pastoral societies.
They supplied not only meat but also:
milk,
wool,
skins
and, historically, transportable wealth.
The modern food map still carries traces of those ancient pastoral economies.
Fish and Seafood Create a Completely Different Geography
The blue category introduces something fundamentally different.
Fish are not livestock.
Their distribution depends heavily on:
coastlines,
oceans,
rivers,
aquaculture
and maritime culture.
Countries with exceptionally high seafood availability include island nations and heavily maritime societies.
FAO-based 2023 data show approximately:
83.8 kg per person in Iceland
79.7 kg in the Maldives
53.5 kg in Portugal
52.8 kg in South Korea
49.1 kg in Norway
and
40.4 kg in Indonesia. (Our World in Data)
Those are very large quantities compared with the world seafood average.
Japan: Seafood Remains Central
Japan is one of the clearest examples on the map.
Our World in Data specifically identifies seafood as Japan’s leading category when meat and fish are compared. (Our World in Data)
That has obvious geographical logic.
Japan is an island country surrounded by productive marine ecosystems.
For centuries, seafood provided a major source of protein in a country where extensive cattle pasture was relatively limited.
Japanese cuisine consequently developed extraordinarily sophisticated traditions involving:
fish,
shellfish,
seaweed,
fermentation,
drying
and raw seafood.
Sushi is only the internationally famous tip of a much larger maritime food culture.
Indonesia Shows That Seafood Isn’t Just a Rich-Country Pattern
Indonesia also stands out strongly on maps of seafood availability.
That makes sense when you consider its geography.
Indonesia consists of thousands of islands spread across an enormous tropical maritime zone.
FAO-derived data put fish and seafood supply at about 40.4 kg per person in 2023. (Our World in Data)
Here again, geography shapes diet.
A country surrounded by productive seas has access to a completely different protein system from a landlocked country in Central Asia.
Portugal Is One of Europe’s Seafood Giants
Portugal deserves special mention.
Its fish and seafood supply was roughly:
53.5 kg per person in 2023
according to FAO data processed by Our World in Data. (Our World in Data)
That is among the highest levels in Europe.
Portugal’s long Atlantic coastline, fishing history and maritime empire all helped build a strong seafood culture.
Cod—bacalhau—became particularly iconic, even though much of it historically came from distant North Atlantic fishing grounds rather than Portuguese coastal waters.
That illustrates another important factor:
Trade can matter as much as local production.
India Shows How Culture Can Suppress Overall Meat Consumption
India is especially interesting because the question is not merely which animal dominates.
Total meat supply itself is low.
FAO data put Indian meat availability at only about:
8.1 kg per person in 2023. (Our World in Data)
Our World in Data notes India’s strong lactovegetarian traditions as an important reason meat consumption remains low compared with many countries. (Our World in Data)
Religious and cultural attitudes toward cattle are also highly significant.
So even if poultry or another category becomes the largest meat type statistically, that does not mean meat occupies the same role in the average Indian diet as it does in Australia, the United States or Argentina.
This exposes an important limitation of the map:
Dominant category does not tell you total quantity.
A Country Can Be “Chicken Dominant” While Eating Very Little Meat
Imagine two countries.
Country A consumes:
40 kg poultry,
20 kg pork,
15 kg beef.
Country B consumes:
5 kg poultry,
2 kg beef,
1 kg pork.
Both would be colored as poultry dominant.
Yet Country A consumes several times more meat overall.
That is why maps showing only the winning category should ideally be paired with a total-consumption map.
Globally, the differences are enormous.
FAO data show total meat supply in 2023 ranging from well over 100 kg per person in several wealthy or livestock-rich countries to below 10 kg in some low-income countries. (Our World in Data)
Income Changes How Much Meat People Eat
Across countries, meat availability tends to increase as incomes rise.
This makes intuitive sense.
Producing animal protein generally requires more resources than producing staple grains or tubers.
As households become wealthier, they often spend more on:
meat,
dairy,
eggs
and other higher-cost foods.
Our World in Data finds a strong relationship between GDP per person and meat supply internationally. (Our World in Data)
But increasing income does not determine which meat becomes dominant.
Culture decides much of that.
China became wealthier and expanded pork consumption.
The Gulf states expanded poultry and lamb.
Argentina remained strongly associated with beef.
Japan maintained a large seafood component.
Economic development increases choice.
History often determines what people choose.
Industrial Agriculture Is Making Chicken More Universal
One long-term change is particularly visible worldwide:
poultry is spreading.
Chicken production industrializes easily.
The animals mature quickly.
Feed conversion is efficient.
Large farms can produce huge quantities in relatively little space.
International frozen-food supply chains make poultry easy to export.
And chicken crosses religious boundaries more easily than pork or beef.
That combination makes poultry one of the strongest candidates to become increasingly dominant in countries where other meats historically led.
The global food map is therefore not permanent.
It is changing.
“Other Meat” Is a Reminder That the Categories Are Simplified
The brown category labeled “other meat” groups together meat that does not fit neatly within the major poultry, beef, pork or sheep-and-goat categories used in this visualization.
National cuisines can include animals that are relatively uncommon globally.
But once everything is reduced to six colors, enormous local complexity disappears.
That is unavoidable in a world map.
The purpose is to reveal the largest pattern—not every food tradition.
What This Map Really Shows
At first glance this appears to be a map of favorite foods.
It is actually a map of several overlapping forces.
Poultry shows the power of modern industrial agriculture.
Beef traces grasslands and ranching traditions.
Pork reveals agricultural history—and the boundaries created by religion.
Sheep and goat meat trace pastoral landscapes.
Fish and seafood reveal the importance of oceans, islands and maritime cultures.
Income determines how much animal food many societies can afford.
Trade allows countries to consume foods that their own landscapes could never produce efficiently.
The result is a world food map built from both nature and culture.
Accuracy Note for the Infographic
The source attribution to Our World in Data based on FAO Food Balance data is appropriate. The latest dataset processed by Our World in Data was updated in February 2026 and mainly reflects 2023 food supply. (Our World in Data)
I would, however, change the title from:
“The Most Consumed Meat Type in Every Country”
to:
“The Dominant Meat or Seafood Type by Country”
And change the subtitle to:
“Highest per-capita food supply among poultry, beef/buffalo, pork, sheep/goat, other meat, and fish/seafood — latest FAO data, mainly 2023.”
I would also add:
“Food Balance data measure food available for consumption and do not subtract household waste. They should not be interpreted as exact individual intake.”
That terminology matches how FAO and Our World in Data describe the dataset. (Our World in Data)
