What is the meaning of the terms: brown meat, black meat, white meat and red meat?

Question

While reading an article, I saw this question:

Do you prefer brown meat or white meat?

I definitely don't know what this means. Could you tell me more about it?

Answer 1

White meat and red meat are typically used to define what type of animal is being eaten:

white meat
|(h)waɪt mit|
noun
pale meat such as poultry, veal, and rabbit. Often contrasted with red meat .

red meat
|ˈˈrɛd ˈmit|
noun
meat that is red when raw, for example beef or lamb. Often contrasted with white meat

^NOAD

The term brown meat should read dark meat and is used opposite the term white meat to describe the darker (brown) parts (non-breast meat) of a typical white meat animal—usually poultry.

I have not heard of black meat.

Answer 2

I typically see the comparison between dark meat and white meat:

White meat or light meat refers to the lighter-colored meat of poultry as contrasted with dark meat.

The article also has this to say:

The exact definite demarcation line may be changing. Game is sometimes put in a separate category of meat altogether (French viandes noires, black meats).

Red meat is more commonly used to refer to that of mammals:

Red meat in traditional culinary terminology is meat which is red when raw and not white when cooked. In the nutritional sciences, red meat includes all mammal meat. Red meat includes the meat of most adult mammals and some fowl (e.g. ducks).

I've never actually heard of brown meat but there is a technique known as browning meat:

Browning is the process of partially cooking meat to help remove excessive fat and to give the meat a brown color and flavor through various browning reactions.

Answer 3

'Brown meat' can refer to a particular sort of meat found in crustaceans: it's a fairly rare and technical usage.

The European Commission has published an amendment to the Contaminants Regulation (Regulation 1881/2006) with a rewording of the Regulation that removes all reference to the 'brown meat of crab'. Brown meat is exempt from the limits placed on heavy metals, dioxins and polychlorinated biophenyls (PCBs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In its place, the new wording describes the meat to which maximum levels apply as 'muscle meat from appendages and abdomen'.

Incidentally, 'green meat' is often used as a term for meat that has been around too long to be safe for human consumption: it is sometimes put into petfood (or cheap sausages, allegedly).

Answer 4

I'm guessing they meant "dark meat", as in the darker-colored meat from certain parts of poultry (the legs and thighs of a chicken or turkey, for example, as opposed to the much lighter, "white" meat from the breast and wings).

"Red meat" (from cows, primarily, in the US anyway) is very clearly red prior to being cooked, but also turns brown during the cooking process. However, it's normal to refer to it as red meat, not brown meat.

Answer 5

It looks to me like your title and your question are different questions.

To answer the actual question about the sentence Do you prefer brown meat or white meat?...

Almost certainly the person was referring to chicken (probably fried chicken). If I'm right, the question should actually be Do you prefer dark meat or white meat? This is the traditional way to categorize the various parts of a chicken. The meat from the breast and wings of chicken is considerably lighter in color than the rest of the chicken, and is referred to as "white meat". The rest of the chicken (typically just the thighs and legs) is darker in color, and is referred to as "dark meat". Most (but not all) people prefer the taste of white meat, and it has less fat so it is relatively healthier (an advantage which is rendered kind of moot when you then deep-fry the food). But because people have these preferences, vendors who specialize in selling prepared chicken generally are forced to offer it as all dark or all white, and to ask you Dark or white meat? when you order.

Other poultry also has this distinction, although they vary by what parts (if any) are considered "white meat". Actually, most are all "dark meat". Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the subject.

Dark meat, which avian myologists (bird muscle scientists) refer to as "red muscle," is used for sustained activity—chiefly walking, in the case of a chicken. The dark color comes from the protein myoglobin, which plays a key role in oxygen uptake within cells. White muscle, in contrast, is suitable only for short, ineffectual bursts of activity such as, for chickens, flying. Thus the chicken's leg and thigh meat are dark while its breast meat (which makes up the primary flight muscles) is white. Other birds with breast muscle more suitable for sustained flight, such as ducks and geese, have red muscle (and therefore dark meat) throughout.