The male wears silky, orange-red feathers, has deep-purple wings and a highly exaggerated wattle and comb, while the female has soft, rusty-brown plumage and a white speckled neck. Both are red junglefowl, found across much of southeast Asia, and chickens, as we know them, are descendants of this gorgeous, pugnacious, but sociable couple. According to food scientist Harold McGee, domestication seems to have taken place near Thailand sometime before 7,500BC. Several thousand years later, in about 500BC, chickens arrived in the Mediterranean, where they were largely “unpampered farmyard and courtyard scavengers”, providing eggs and occasional meat. That is until the 19th century and a chicken-breeding craze in Europe and North America, which was followed by mass production in the 20th century.
Every so often I need to pick up Hattie Ellis’ Planet Chicken, as well as her book What to Eat: 10 Chewy Questions about Food, which journeys through nature, science and the dark arts of the food industry, emerging with clear thoughts and ways to feed ourselves. For those of us who continue (for now) to eat chicken, her advice is this: eat less but better; shop at the butcher, not just at the supermarket; make the most of cheap cuts; don’t trust the label, and find out about meat without packaging; learn about animal welfare; visit a farm.
