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Where practice people eat the most meat?

It seems a fairly simple question: In which U.S. states practise people eat the most meat?  Nonetheless, there is surprisingly little good, publicly bachelor data on this question.  Yes, there are fun maps like this one at Slate, but they are far from scientific or information driven.

I idea I'd try to partially fill this void by turning to data from my Food Need Survey (FooDS) that has been running now for nigh four years.  Because I've surveyed over 1,000 people in the U.S. for about 44 months, that means I have responses from over 44,000 people spread all across the state that I can use to help look for geographic differences.

In FooDS, each person is told "Imagine yous are at the grocery store buying the ingredients to prepare a meal for you or your household.  For each of the following nine questions that follow, please point which meal you would be almost likely to purchase."  So, they are presented with nine questions that look like the ane below.  The merely differences across the questions are the prices assigned to each particular and the order of the items.

For sake of simplicity, I counted the number of times each person chose steak, how many times they chose craven chest, etc.  Thus, the maximum possible "score" a person could have for each item is ix and the lowest is 0.  To be clear, this isn't a measure of consumption, simply rather it is an index of demand.  It is a mensurate of how much people "like" each of the choice options relative to all the other selection options.  For point of reference, beyond all the people in my sample, the near frequently chosen pick was craven breast (chosen on boilerplate ii.43 times out of 9) followed by basis beef/hamburger (chosen on average 1.33 times out of 9).  The least pop meat items were pork chop and ham, chosen on boilerplate 0.80 and 0.68 times, respectively, out of 9.

I won't go into all the hairy details here (email if you want to know more), but I then estimated some statistical models to infer how often, on average, consumers in each land chose each of the meat options.  And then, I calculated how dissimilar (in pct terms) each state was from the mean number of choices, and I created maps.

I'll kickoff with one that has a very obvious regional pattern: chicken wings.

Chicken Wing Demand by State

Chicken Wing Demand by State

Demand for chicken wings is highest in the southeast US, where people chose this option 15% to 44% more often than in the boilerplate person in the US.  Consumers in western states similar Oregon, Idaho, and Arizona chose wings xv% to 27% less often than the average consumer nationwide.

For other products, at that place is less of a regional blueprint.  Below is the map for beefiness steak.  Need for steak is highest in California, Nevada, Washington, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Illinois, Florida, and New York.  Steak demand is lowest in Idaho, Utah, Missouri,  and the Appalachian regions, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia.

Beef Steak Demand by State

Beefiness Steak Demand past State

While nosotros are on beef, here is the map for hamburger/ground beef.  For basis beef, demand is mostly highest in the upper midwest and is lower on the coasts.

Demand for Ground Beef by State

Demand for Footing Beefiness by Country

A somewhat similar pattern emerges for deli ham (shown beneath), although the location of heaviest demand moves a bit south and eastward relative to that for hamburger.

Deli Ham Demand by State

Deli Ham Need by State

Below is the map for pork chops.  This map is interesting in the sense that there are several instances where some of the highest demand states are situated next to some of the lowest need states (due east.g., Oregon next to California; Oklahoma side by side to Texas; etc.)  However, ane thing to note in the case of pork chops is the scaling: there isn't much difference across any of the states.  Consumers in Missouri accept the highest pork chop demand, just just chose pork chops 2.seven% more than than the average consumer.  Consumers in California have the everyman pork chop need, but only chose pork chops three.3% less than the boilerplate consumer nationwide.

Pork Chop Demand by State

Pork Chop Demand by Land

The concluding private meat production is craven chest.  As shown in the map below, chicken breast demand is more often than not highest in the w and the northeast.  I'm not at all surprised to learn that chicken chest need is near the lowest in my home state of Oklahoma (at -4.5%), trailing but Due north Carolina, Missouri, and Mississippi.

Chicken Breast Demand by State

Craven Chest Demand by Land

Finally, to round things out, here is a map associated with overall meat demand.  This figure was calculated by determining how many times a person chose any of the vi same meat products (recall in that location were nine full options, three of which were not-meat).  On boilerplate people chose a meat option 7.03 times out of ix full choices.  However, as the map below shows, there is some heterogeneity across states.  Overall meat need is highest in the Midwest: consumers in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa chose any meat option 1%+ more frequently than the boilerplate consumer.  Lowest overall meat need was in places like California, Arizona, Maryland, Utah, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, where consumers chose a meat options at least 1% less frequently than the average consumer.

Overall Meat Demand by State

Overall Meat Demand by State