CHRIST_764
Kraken
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2025
- Posts
- 3,448
- Reputation
- 5,044
1600s Europe: Meat is restricted. Hunting laws prevent commoners from taking game. Land ownership concentrated in nobility. Access to meat is determined by class.
Working-class Europeans eat bread, porridge, occasional salted fish, minimal meat.
Then they hear about America: Unlimited game. No hunting restrictions. Forests full of deer. Coastlines thick with fish. Wild turkey, passenger pigeons in millions, bison herds.
The promise isn't religious freedom. It's protein freedom.
European promotional materials advertising American colonies: "Game so abundant you can shoot it from your doorstep. Fish so plentiful you can catch them by hand. Meat available to the common man."
This isn't exaggeration for effect. This is the primary draw. In Europe, if you weren't nobility, meat was scarce and expensive.
In America, anyone could hunt. There were no royal forests. No poaching laws. No class restrictions.
The American frontier: Where poor European peasants could finally eat like rich European lords.
Settlers' journals document this repeatedly: Amazement at meat abundance. Writing home about eating meat daily. Something impossible in Europe.
Benjamin Franklin writes about this: Americans are taller and healthier than Europeans. He attributes it directly to meat availability. The American diet includes meat at levels European commoners never experienced.
The height difference is measurable. American-born colonists average 2-3 inches taller than European-born immigrants. Same genetic stock. Different nutrition.
The American experiment in democracy coincides with the American experiment in democratised meat access.
For the first time in millennia, meat isn't restricted by class. Anyone can hunt. Anyone can eat.
The European model: Meat for the few, grain for the many, restrictions enforced by law and economics.
The American model: Meat for everyone, abundance through available game, no legal restrictions.
The great migration to America was partially a meat migration. Europeans fleeing protein scarcity for protein abundance.
Your ancestors didn't just come to America for freedom. They came to finally eat properly.
Working-class Europeans eat bread, porridge, occasional salted fish, minimal meat.
Then they hear about America: Unlimited game. No hunting restrictions. Forests full of deer. Coastlines thick with fish. Wild turkey, passenger pigeons in millions, bison herds.
The promise isn't religious freedom. It's protein freedom.
European promotional materials advertising American colonies: "Game so abundant you can shoot it from your doorstep. Fish so plentiful you can catch them by hand. Meat available to the common man."
This isn't exaggeration for effect. This is the primary draw. In Europe, if you weren't nobility, meat was scarce and expensive.
In America, anyone could hunt. There were no royal forests. No poaching laws. No class restrictions.
The American frontier: Where poor European peasants could finally eat like rich European lords.
Settlers' journals document this repeatedly: Amazement at meat abundance. Writing home about eating meat daily. Something impossible in Europe.
Benjamin Franklin writes about this: Americans are taller and healthier than Europeans. He attributes it directly to meat availability. The American diet includes meat at levels European commoners never experienced.
The height difference is measurable. American-born colonists average 2-3 inches taller than European-born immigrants. Same genetic stock. Different nutrition.
The American experiment in democracy coincides with the American experiment in democratised meat access.
For the first time in millennia, meat isn't restricted by class. Anyone can hunt. Anyone can eat.
The European model: Meat for the few, grain for the many, restrictions enforced by law and economics.
The American model: Meat for everyone, abundance through available game, no legal restrictions.
The great migration to America was partially a meat migration. Europeans fleeing protein scarcity for protein abundance.
Your ancestors didn't just come to America for freedom. They came to finally eat properly.
