On the Menu: Chicken has earned the right to be popular
-
Chicken in Easy Adobo
Share with others:
Americans love chicken. It's the most popular meat in grocery stores, on restaurant menus and in our own kitchens. There's no food we're more familiar with, and there's certainly no shortage of ideas for how to prepare it. If you Google "chicken recipes," you could spend the next 10 years just trying to read through the 6 million-plus results.
Familiarity, in this case, breeds a bit of contempt. Chicken can seem culinarily boring. Too many restaurants treat chicken as the "safe" entree for picky diners, serving up dry, flavorless roasted chicken breasts meant to appease rather than impress. As a result, in the culinary world, the cool kids do not order chicken, unless it comes fried, confit or otherwise dressed up in extra-indulgent guise.
But a study released earlier this year from the Environmental Working Group got me thinking about chickens, and whether their popularity was such a bad thing.
The EWG partnered with CleanMetrics, an environmental analysis firm, to assess the carbon-footprints (greenhouse-gas emissions) of 20 popular vegetable, dairy, meat and seafood protein choices, from lentils and tomatoes to beef and lamb. The results are presented in the Meat Eaters Guide to Climate Change and Health -- slightly misnamed, as it has plenty of useful information for vegetarians as well.
PG VIDEOCleanMetrics analyzed the greenhouse gas emissions of each product's "lifecycle," from the fertilizer used to grow the grain fed to cattle to the energy consumed disposing of wasted vegetables. The EWG incorporated other suggestions about how to make ingredients more healthful (e.g., drink plain rather than chocolate milk, choose organic potatoes as conventional versions tend to be high in pesticide residues).
Unsurprisingly, vegetarian protein sources such as lentils, tofu and broccoli scored better than meat in terms of carbon-footprints and health recommendations. But chicken fared surprisingly well, clocking in at just 2.75 car miles driven per 4 ounces consumed, compared with just under 0.5 miles for broccoli.
PG VIDEOThe study analyzed conventionally raised meats, because that's what most people eat. But theoretically, local, pasture-raised chickens would score better, as would grass-fed beef or local pork.
A good way to reduce the price of chicken (perhaps making local or organic options more affordable) is to buy a whole bird, cut it up yourself and use all the parts for different meals. (To learn how, watch chef Shawn Culp demonstrate how to cut up or butterfly a whole chicken at www.post-gazette.com/food.)
First Published October 9, 2011 12:00 am
