Taking Stock: Meat

"According to the Agriculture Department, Americans eat over 110 pounds of red meat per year [5 oz per day] ... along with 106 pounds of poultry [4 1/2 oz per day]." -- Does-Eating-Meat-Increase-Your-Risk-of-Dying? That would not be us. We do eat meat, for a variety of reasons, but our meat consumption is way less than the American norm. Which is a good thing, because we simply don't have enough freezer space for 650 pounds of meat (a year's supply for three average Americans.)

My target rate for meat consumption is about two ounces per person per day. I got that number from a talk by Chris Peters, a researcher over at Cornell who does research on local diets. Chris did a study comparing omnivorous with vegetarian diets, with varying fat contents, to determine what kind of a local New York diet would feed the largest number of people. He concluded that, because we have so much land that is better suited to pasture than agriculture, we can feed more people locally on a diet that includes a little bit of meat.

So far, we haven't paid much attention to meat when stocking up -- we buy haphazardly, and haven't tracked usage at all. I know that a pound of meat serves the three of us for two dinners, and we include meat in our dinners a bit more than half the time, so doing the math, we probably use about 100 pounds a year for dinners. We sometimes eat meat at breakfast or lunch as well, so with that plus a little padding on the estimate, we might consume 150 to 200 pounds of meat a year.

Even at that rate, it would take a *lot* of freezer space to store a year's supply of meat. We do have a chest freezer, but the meat has to share it with fruits and veggies and random leftovers. So we don't try very hard to keep a year's supply on hand. (I figure we probably make up for it by keeping more than a year's supply of beans.)

Here's what I currently have in the freezer:

• turkey, 8 lb
• 2 chickens, 7 1/2 lbs
• ground lamb, 6 lb
• misc. lamb pieces, 6 lb
• lamb stew meat, 3 3/4 lb
• bacon, 3 lb
• eye round roast, 2 1/2 lb
• 
  
  pork chops, 2 lbs
• italian sausage, 1 1/2 lb
• buffalo steak, 1 1/4 lb
• ham steak, 1 lb
• buffalo sticks, ~1 lb (14 sticks)
• chicken sausage, 3/4 lb
• flank steak, 3/4 lb
• fish, 3/4 lb
• canned fish -- 11 tins (~4 lb)

The total weight is approximately 50 pounds, which according to my ballpark estimate ought to last about 3-4 months.

So, as a cross check here's what I think we've eaten so far this month (as of 3/15):

• turkey, 2 legs & 2 wings (guess: 3 lbs?)
• summer sausage & salami, 2 lb
• ground lamb, 1 lb
• italian sausage, 1/2 lb
• buffalo snack sticks, 1/2 lb
• bacon, 1/2 lb

If that reflects our typical consumption, it would put us at 180 pounds a year. Two ounces per person per day is about 135 pounds in a year, so we may be a bit over our target. Good to know; I should probably cut back a little. (The limiting factor comes down to advance planning -- beans, our primary locally-available alternative, require overnight soaking and long cooking times. Dairy and soy are out for two of us, due to allergies.)