When the statistics are shown and all the data is laid out, people can really see just an estimate of how much meat just how much people in the U.S. consume a year. Now of course it's well known already that Americans eat a lot of meat, but did they know that “the average american consumes about 110 lbs or red meat, 73 lbs of poultry, and 16 lbs of fish and shellfish.” This demonstrates that the population consumes way more than the recommended amount of meat every year and this causes problems in different areas. Take into consideration that there is more than 323 million people that live in the U.S. as of right now and that number will continue to grow at a very fast rate. The data really does show that there is so much meat that we consume every year, proving that as a nation we are causing problems in pollution, mistreatment of animals, and affecting our own health. Of course not everyone that lives in the United States are meat eaters. In fact about 7.3 million people are vegetarians, making up 3.2% of the population here do not eat meat. Some cities that have the most vegetarians are Charlottesville, Virginia, San Francisco, California and Seattle, Washington. These cities have plenty of food options that do not include meat in them. When you look at the regions in the U.S. you can see that the Midwest eats more meat and the west coast eats the least amount of meat. This could be because there are a lot more animals farms that are located in the Midwest and also there are more trendy restaurants in the west coast that promote eating healthier which means to cut back on all the red meat and poultry that's mostly consumed by mid westerners. So the location and what's popular really does have a serious impact on what areas eat the most and least amount of meat in the U.S.
Now in the past it was very uncommon for a person to not eat meat but as decades passed the number has increased exponentially. Now there are millions that have cut red meat, poultry, and seafood out of their diets and replaced them with other options. Since the Vegetarian population is growing and looks to continue, there are many companies that might be affected by this change. Ones that run animals farms such as ConAgra, Smithfield Foods Inc., and Tyson Foods Inc are getting stormed by many protesters that are calling these companies out for mistreatment of the animals. Now more than ever we are seeing these protest and people pledging to make the change in their diets that not only helps the animals but their own health. There are companies that have given into the trend and are starting to announce that they only get meat from healthy animals that were treated correctly and not inhumane. If this trend continues then we are going to see a impact change in animals farms and hopefully not have farms that mistreat their animals or put harmful chemicals in them.