Beef. I’m not a big fan of pork or seafood, and poultry is pretty limited (although I do like turkey). While I generally prefer to take my protein from veggies I do eat meat a couple of times per week, and 80% of the time it’s a beef product.
So beef it is.
I mean, there’s still beans, and peanut butter, and cheese, and eggs: the weirdo meat wizard of the OP specifies that dairy etc. is okay. So I’m not too worried about that.
As it goes, as a consequence of (past) colitis I’m half way there already. To minimize the risk of relapse, no pork, no beef (and no lamb, goat, elk, etc. Oddly, rabbit is allowed.). Do I miss them? Not as much as you might think - life without bacon is possible.
So, yeah, seafood. I love duck, but you can’t live on it; and chicken gets real old, real quick (voice of experience talking here). Seafood, as others have pointed out, offers variety - thank god. (I’m tempted to add that I could just live on sardines, but even they get old eventually.)
j
How about environmental effects? One reason I’ve been cutting back on cow products is their contribution to global warming. If cows weren’t farting so much methane into the atmosphere, I’d eat a lot more cow.
Vegetarian, almost vegan here. I’d donate my share to someone else who needs it - I’ve got all I need with plants, eggs, and dairy. Can even do without the eggs and dairy as long as I’ve got B12 supplements…
Let’s just say that isn’t universally true. We eat a lot of chicken in lots of different ways, and I am totally not bored with them.
YMMV, as they say. Agree to differ?
I should add that seafood and (these days) a wide range of vegetarian foods has rejuvenated chicken for me. I certainly can eat it with pleasure now. Just not all the time (or anything like ).
j
Well, yeah. You just seemed to be stating it as a universal truth, and I was producing a counterexample.
Certainly there is a “to each their own” thing here. My BiL would happily eat steak and potatoes everyday for the rest of his life (probably a short one with that diet). He’ll eat seafood and chicken and like it but it is all about beef for him.
If we want anything close to an “answer” to the OP I think we need to look at variety. How many different ways you can prepare one animal protein?
Poultry, also because it’s easy to get along with. And I’m including chicken, duck, ostrich, game hen and turkey, even though I’ve never cooked duck or ostrich myself, but I’ll order either if available.
I’m assuming the eggs are included, right?
Living near a turkey farm, I’m amazed by how many items can be made with turkey. They have faux ham salad made with turkey that I prefer over real pig ham salad. Their turkey burgers are delicious. Smoked turkey breast is great and turkey hotdogs taste like hotdogs.
First, sticking with the OP, I have three different answers depending on interpretation.
As written, with the concerns of cost of some critters, and the advantage of overbroad categories, I’d go with poultry. I’d have chicken as a default, turkey for more flavor, and amazing duck for my ‘upscale’ option.
If the wizard was ensuring a reasonable cost, but otherwise the broad categories, I’d pick seafood, because I enjoy the huge variety, and the flavor options are immense if I can offset the cost. But that’s not explicit in the OP.
If the wizard meant to pick a single creature from the poultry or seafood categories to make it equivalent to the single critter options listed first, then it’s pork. Just one avian, or fish, or crustacean wouldn’t cut it for me, and pork is both reasonably priced and quite versatile. Not that beef critters aren’t (beef baken as an example) but at current and likely future prices, I’ll stick to pork.
Okay, if @Nars_Glinley comes back and gives us a clearer understanding of his wizard, I’ll vote then.
Onto @Johnny_Bravo’s well thought out version.
In which case, I’ll be back to my first answer after much hesitation and pick poultry since the cost is mitigated. Swine is now extremely limited by comparison to the other categories. I love shellfish, but eventually I’d get tired of the comparatively limited flavors, even with unlimited non-animal products to flavor it up. Fish are a great love, and has a wide variety of flavors, but not quite enough to compare to the last two.
Bovids would be immensely tempting, and on a different day, -might- beat out poultry. Especially with leg of lamb, roast lamb chops, and the like moving into the affordable (as it’s stupidly pricey in the US) category. But … for the moment, poultry still wins.
With the affordability, I can have delicious ostrich when I want something beefy, duck when I want something fat and savory, chicken for general purpose use. Another advantage is the wizard is being a shit, so if I have to TRAVEL, I’m a lot more likely to find some form of poultry anywhere I go, where larger bovids may not generally be on the menu, or only in forms I may not care for (for example, I’ve had goat, and while not terrible, it doesn’t work for me).
NOTE: If we get a ruling on secondary products (milk and eggs) that’ll also have to come into evaluations.
Ooh, hard.
Some of my favorite meats are poultry. Chicken, duck, squab…
But there’s so much more variety with fish.
I do love me some red meat (beef, lamb, elk, antelope)
Delicious as bacon is, pork isn’t in the running.
Poultry. It’s the most sustainable of the mass-produced land meats (but still basically an environmental disaster), and birds are generally unpleasant creatures. Plus I think if need be I could raise and slaughter them on my own. I’m not sure I could murder a mammal that I’d raised.
I would miss crustaceans, but most fish basically all tastes the same to me, so the “variety” argument doesn’t work for me.
Are eggs considered chicken or dairy? Because I will not give up eggs
No need, my friend. That’s why god invented manatees.
I’m obsessed with Raising Cane’s right now so I’d go with fowl.
Show me manatee bacon, and that’ll be an option.
“Dairy” is generally defined as: “food containing milk or milk derivatives.”
Eggs come from an bird, which generally do not produce milk.
Poultry. Ostrich is already my primary red meat, so it’s a no-brainer.
I will miss seafood, though.