Per capita beef consumption

Per capita beef consumption has slipped steadily for nearly three decades. In 1980, the average American consumed 76.4 pounds of beef. That figure had fallen to 53.8 pounds by 2015. Beef consumption has declined as the potential health problems associated with it, such as obesity and heart disease, have become increasingly publicized. The lost consumption has shifted chiefly to poultry, a lower-fat protein alternative. Beef was the most-consumed meat in the United States until 1993, when it was overtaken by poultry. The falling consumption continued through 2015 before increasing per capita income helped push demand for beef upwards. As beef remains a staple of US consumers' diets, its consumption has increased with growing income and employment over the past decades.

Beef, however, has increasingly become a topic of scrutiny as younger consumers aid in reducing red meat consumption due to its association with carcinogens produced from ingesting processed meat. Many companies have emerged in the past ten years to produce plant-based beef alternatives, which have increased in popularity over the five years to 2022. While this trend has led to a deceleration in beef consumption, direct declines are primarily the result of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. While many consumers had to work from home at the time, the growth of home cooking, as opposed to dining out, became a popularized option at the time. However, while this contributes to consistent demand for items such as beef, the downturn of restaurant activity at the time hampered growth in per capita beef consumption, which resulted in growth meagerly growing in the year. The resulting shutdowns also brought on production challenges for cattle herders, who also had to limit their operations to avoid contracting the virus, which slowed production as a result even as demand remained present for meat in the period.

As many downstream markets reopened following the pandemic, per capita beef consumption went up in 2021 and 2022. A reason for these boosts in consumption has been partially from the reopening of the economy, which let more individuals shop and buy more goods again without having to abide by restrictions. In turn, beef consumption has boosted in both 2021 and 2022. With more downstream markets reopening and more people dining out again, consumption of these items has risen accordingly. But economic stresses amid inflationary pressures have slimmed more consumer budgets than in the previous years, leading to 2023 being a break from the previous years in beef consumption. Factors like inflationary pressures and the changing behaviors of consumers responding to such pressures will also lead to a drop in consumption in 2024. But consumption will go up in 2025 as price recoveries for various items will give consumers less second thought about buying and consuming goods like meat as inflation fades away from the picture.