The line graph plots how much four kinds of meat were eaten by the European on average in a week from 1979 to 2004.
Overall, although beef was the most consumed meat in the first decade of the period, the weekly quantity of chicken took the dominance for the rest of the time span. In addition, lamb consumption decreased over the period, while the trend for fish remained almost unchanged.
In 1979, the one-week intake of beef by a typical European individual stood at around 210 grams, which was 70 grams more than that of chicken, the third most eaten food ingredient. In 3 years, both figures experienced the same upward trend; the former reaching the peak of 240 grams, the latter rising to 160 grams. After that, they saw different trend in their consumption rates. While beef intake decreased noticeably with fluctuations year by year, finishing the period at around 100 grams, the figure for chicken rose dramatically with mild oscillations, both surpassing its counterpart in 1990 when their numbers were generally the same, at 200 grams, and climbing to 250 grams of weekly eating.
As for two other kinds of meat, lamb consumption was at 150 grams in 1979, the only year for its figure to take the second rank. From the very next year to the end, it showed a downward trend by closing the period with the amount of nearly 60 grams. Meanwhile, the quantity of fish consumed weekly didn’t change the figure of 50 grams at all, except slight decreases at the start and at the end of the period.