The History of Lamb — The Meat America Hated and the World Loved

#History #Food
America once had 56 million sheep. Today it has fewer than 6 million. 🐑

In this episode of Crumb Lore, we dig into how the biggest meat-eating country on earth ended up barely touching lamb, the one meat much of the world treats as sacred.

The story runs through:

→ The first domesticated sheep in Mesopotamia, over 10,000 years ago
→ Lamb's place in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
→ The brutal sheep wars of the American West, with roughly 120 armed clashes between cattlemen and shepherds
→ The class stigma that tied lamb to immigrant kitchens
→ Canned mutton in World War Two, and the veterans who swore off sheep for good
→ The industrial food system that scaled beef and chicken, then left lamb behind
→ How Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, and Europe went the other way
→ The slow comeback driven by immigrant communities, farmers markets, and restaurant chefs

Do you eat lamb regularly, or have you never tried it? Tell us in the comments, and subscribe to Crumb Lore for more food history.

By https://www.youtube.com/@crumb.lore-yt