Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults. Chicken is the most common type of poultry in the world. Chicken can be prepared in a vast range of ways, including baking, chicken recipes fast and easy, barbecuing, frying, and boiling. Since the latter half of the 20th century, prepared chicken has become a staple of fast food.

The poultry farming industry that accounts for chicken production takes on a range of forms across different parts of the world. In developed countries, chickens are typically subject to intensive farming methods while less-developed areas raise chickens using more traditional farming techniques. The modern chicken is a descendant of red junglefowl hybrids along with the grey junglefowl first raised thousands of years ago in the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. Chicken as a meat has been depicted in Babylonian carvings from around 600 BC.

Chicken was one of the most common meats available in the Middle Ages. In the United States in the 1800s, chicken was more expensive than other meats and it was “sought by the rich because so costly as to be an uncommon dish. World War II due to a shortage of beef and pork. The United States Department of Agriculture classifies cuts of poultry in a manner similar to beef. Modern varieties of chicken such as the Cornish Cross, are bred specifically for meat production, with an emphasis placed on the ratio of feed to meat produced by the animal.