White meat or light meat refers to the lighter-colored meat of poultry

Poultry

Poultry are domesticated birds kept by humans for the purpose of producing eggs, meat, and/or feathers. These most typically are members of the superorder Galloanserae , especially the order Galliformes and the family Anatidae , commonly known as "waterfowl"...

 as contrasted with dark meat. In a more general sense, white meat may also refer to any lighter-colored meat

Meat

Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...

, as contrasted with red meat

Red meat

Red meat in traditional culinary terminology is meat which is red when raw and not white when cooked. In the nutritional sciences, red meat includes all mammal meat. Red meat includes the meat of most adult mammals and some fowl ....

s like beef and some types of game.

Definition

The exact definite demarcation line may be changing. Game

Game (food)

Game is any animal hunted for food or not normally domesticated. Game animals are also hunted for sport.The type and range of animals hunted for food varies in different parts of the world. This will be influenced by climate, animal diversity, local taste and locally accepted view about what can or...

 is sometimes put in a separate category of meat altogether (French viandes noires, black meats).

Pork

Given nutritional concerns, meat producers are eager to have their products considered as "white", and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 National Pork Board

National Pork Board

The National Pork Board, headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa is a quasigovernmental body of the United States government that was established under the terms of the Pork Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act of 1985, also known as the Pork Act, which was included as part of the 1985...

 has positioned their product as "Pork. The Other White Meat

Pork. The Other White Meat

"Pork. The Other White Meat." was an advertising slogan developed by advertising agency Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt in 1987 for the National Pork Board. The campaign was paid for using a checkoff fee collected from the initial sale of all pigs and pork products, including imports...

", alongside poultry and fish; however, meats which are red when raw and turn white on cooking, like pork

Pork

Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig , which is eaten in many countries. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC....

, are sometimes categorized by the United States Department of Agriculture

United States Department of Agriculture

The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...

 as red meats. This categorization is controversial as some types of fish, such as tuna

Tuna

Tuna is a salt water fish from the family Scombridae, mostly in the genus Thunnus. Tuna are fast swimmers, and some species are capable of speeds of . Unlike most fish, which have white flesh, the muscle tissue of tuna ranges from pink to dark red. The red coloration derives from myoglobin, an...

, are red when raw and turn white when cooked; similarly, certain types of poultry that are sometimes grouped as "white meat" are actually "red" when raw, such as duck

Duck

Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...

 and goose

Goose

The word goose is the English name for a group of waterfowl, belonging to the family Anatidae. This family also includes swans, most of which are larger than true geese, and ducks, which are smaller....

. The debate is mainly one of semantics as nutritionist

Nutritionist

A nutritionist is a person who advises on matters of food and nutrition impacts on health. Different professional terms are used in different countries, employment settings and contexts — some examples include: nutrition scientist, public health nutritionist, dietitian-nutritionist, clinical...

s consider all meat from mammals to be "red meat" while this is not the case in other fields such as husbandry, biology, genetics, physiology, etc.

In Israel, where Jewish dietary laws

Kashrut

Kashrut is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha is termed kosher in English, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér , meaning "fit" Kashrut (also kashruth or kashrus) is the set of Jewish dietary laws. Food in accord with halakha (Jewish law) is termed...

 are popularly practiced, forbidding the consumption of pork, the usage of the word "hazir" ("pig" and also "pork") is taboo

Taboo

A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...

, "white meat" is the accepted way to refer to pork.

Poultry

Within poultry, there are two types of meats—white and dark. The different colors are based on the different locations and uses of the muscles. Dark meats occur in the leg

Leg

Łęg may refer to the following places in Poland:*A former name for the town of Ełk *Part of the Czyżyny district of Kraków*Łęg, Pleszew County in Greater Poland Voivodeship...

s, which are used to support the weight of the animals while they move. These muscles are designed to develop endurance for long-term use and contain a large amount of myoglobin

Myoglobin

Myoglobin is an iron- and oxygen-binding protein found in the muscle tissue of vertebrates in general and in almost all mammals. It is related to hemoglobin, which is the iron- and oxygen-binding protein in blood, specifically in the red blood cells. The only time myoglobin is found in the...

, allowing the muscle to use oxygen

Oxygen

Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

 more efficiently for aerobic respiration. In contrast the white meat, generally found within the breasts of the birds, are used for quick bursts of power which requires little of the meat-darkening myoglobin. Note that this holds for ground-based birds like chicken and turkeys – birds which use their chest muscles for sustained flight (such as geese and ducks) have dark meat throughout their bodies. There are only slightly more calories and fat in dark meat, and dark meat contains more vitamins.