I didn't grow up in a household that thought twice about where meat came from — because we already knew. My grandfather was a meat distributor. That man knew every cut, every grade, every supplier relationship before "supply chain" was even a buzzword. He took me hunting before I could fully articulate why we were out there at 5am in the cold, and I'm grateful for every single one of those mornings. My grandmother grew up differently — raised around wild turkeys, hogs, and community butchers who were as much a part of the neighborhood as the church was. She knew how to look at an animal and know exactly what it would yield. Nothing was wasted. Nothing was mysterious. Meat was life, and life was intentional.

Between the two of them, I got an education that no food science degree could fully replicate. I've seen my range of meat at home and globally — from processing facilities to open-air markets in Asia to fine dining in Europe — and what I keep coming back to is this: the further we've gotten from the source, the more we've lost the plot on what we're actually eating.

So when I see videos going around about the cuts our ancestors were "forced" to eat, I understand the outrage, but I also want to add some history and context. Because the story of meat in America isn't just about slavery or poverty — it's about ingenuity, survival, community, and an industrialized food system that has quietly changed what's on your plate in ways most people never examine.

Here's a look at some of those cuts — then versus now.

Fatback

My grandmother would have laughed at anyone calling fatback a "specialty item." It was just pork fat. You used it to season your greens, fry your cornbread, or stretch a pot of beans into a meal that could feed ten people. During the Great Depression, families weren't buying it because it was trendy — they were buying it because it was $0.03 a pound and it kept people alive.

Today that same fatback runs $3 to $10 a pound at specialty stores, and it's being sold as a "heritage ingredient" to people who discovered it through a cookbook. The nutrition hasn't changed — it's still about 800 calories per 100 grams of dense, pure fat. What's changed is who gets to feel good about eating it. Back then it came with nothing but salt. Now packaged versions contain sodium nitrite, smoke flavoring, and preservatives your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize.

Oxtail

If there's a meat that tells the whole story of American food culture's relationship with Black and immigrant communities, it's oxtail. My grandfather sold it for almost nothing because nobody wanted it. It was tail. It was scraps. It was the cut that went to families who couldn't afford anything better — and those families slow-braised it into something so rich and deeply flavored that it became one of the most iconic dishes in Caribbean, Korean, and soul food cooking.

Now it runs $8 to $15 a pound at the butcher, $20 to $30 a plate at a restaurant. The cut itself hasn't changed — 262 calories per 100 grams, all that beautiful collagen, all that bone-in depth. What's changed is who profited from figuring out its value, and it wasn't the communities that taught the world how to cook it.

Brisket

My grandfather knew brisket before Texas BBQ made it famous. He knew it was the cut people passed over because it was tough and required time and attention most people didn't want to give. Depression-era families, Jewish immigrant communities, Black Southern cooks — they all figured out independently that low heat and patience turned this cheap, unloved cut into something extraordinary.

Now brisket is $6 to $12 a pound raw, and if you're buying it from a famous BBQ joint, you might pay $50 a pound. The adjusted Depression-era price would have been maybe $2 to $3 a pound. What's the difference? Marketing, culture, and a food media machine that finally caught up to what our people already knew. The other difference: today's commercially packaged brisket is often injected with sodium phosphate and saline solutions to mimic the moisture the old way achieved through pure technique.

Salt Pork

Before refrigeration was widely accessible, salt pork was how you made meat last. My grandmother's community understood preservation not as a science project but as common sense — you salt what you have so it's still there next week. At $0.10 to $0.20 a pound, it was a staple in soups, beans, and stews across working-class America.

Today it sells for $3 to $7 a pound in those small pre-packaged grocery store blocks, and the ingredient list has exploded. What was once just pork and salt now contains sodium nitrite, sodium erythorbate, sodium phosphate, and flavor enhancers — with sodium levels that can hit 1,700mg per serving. The families that ate this during the Depression were eating it plain. What we're eating now is a processed echo of that.

Bologna

Fried bologna sandwiches are a memory that lives in a lot of households that don't talk about it in polite company anymore. But let's be honest — they were good, and they fed people. Bologna was built from leftover scraps that would otherwise be discarded, priced at $0.05 to $0.10 a pound, and fried up in a cast iron skillet with maybe some mustard on white bread. That was lunch. That was survival.

Today standard bologna is $2 to $5 a pound, and the ingredient list has ballooned to 15 or more items — mechanically separated chicken, corn syrup, dextrose, sodium nitrite, modified food starch, artificial flavors. The gourmet versions run $10 to $20 a pound and are marketed as artisan. Same basic concept, wildly different price and composition depending on which aisle you're shopping.

Chicken Backs & Necks

This one is close to home. My grandmother made broth the way her mother made broth — backs, necks, onion, salt, time. The bones gave everything. There was no waste. A 5-cent bag of chicken parts could produce a pot of broth that lasted days and seasoned everything it touched.

Chicken backs and necks are still one of the most affordable cuts available — $0.79 to $2 a pound — and that's actually a good sign. The nutritional value is the same: 130 to 180 calories per 100 grams, with rich collagen and mineral content from the bones. The irony is that the wellness industry has repackaged this exact thing as "bone broth" and is selling it for $8 to $12 a carton with added yeast extract and natural flavors. What your grandmother made for free is now a wellness product.

Hog Maws — "Maws," "Pig Stomachs," "Hog Belly Bags"

You either grew up with this or you didn't. In different parts of the country, people called them maws, pig stomachs, hog belly bags, or just "what grandma made on Sundays that you didn't ask questions about until you were grown." Whatever name your family used, the preparation was the same — cleaned, stuffed, slow-cooked low and long until something that sounded unappetizing became something you'd fight your cousins over at the table.

My grandmother knew exactly how to clean a pig stomach, stuff it, and slow-cook it into something that would make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about cuts of meat. At $0.02 to $0.05 a pound during the Depression, hog maws were the definition of using what you have. Nothing fancy. Nothing wasted. Often stuffed with rice, potatoes, sausage, or whatever scraps were on hand, then braised until the whole thing melted into itself.

Today they're $3 to $8 a pound at specialty and ethnic grocery stores, and they've gained new attention in nose-to-tail dining circles. The nutrition is actually impressive — 100 to 150 calories per 100 grams, lean protein, highly nutrient-dense. Pre-cleaned commercial versions sometimes use a citric acid wash, but they're largely free of the additive load you find in more processed cuts. This is one where the product has stayed relatively true to what it always was. The price has just finally caught up to the respect it always deserved.

Why This History Matters

I've spent my career at the intersection of food science, AI, and supply chain, and what strikes me most when I look at this history isn't just the price inflation — it's the additive load. The further meat has moved from the butcher block and into the factory, the longer the ingredient list has gotten. Cuts that were once just muscle, fat, and salt now travel through processing facilities where phosphates, nitrites, flavor enhancers, and water solutions get added at every step.

The communities that grew up eating these cuts out of necessity — Black families, immigrant families, working-class families — were in many ways eating cleaner than what's available in the mainstream grocery store today. The problem was never the cut. It was always access, dignity, and who got to assign value to what.

My grandfather distributed meat. My grandmother knew how to use every part of an animal. I grew up understanding that food knowledge is generational, and losing it has a cost. That cost shows up in what we're eating now — and most people don't even know what they're reading on the label.

Pay attention to your food. Know your source. And respect the cuts that fed your people before anyone else thought they were worth eating.

Riana Lynn is the Founder & CEO of Journey AI, an ingredient intelligence platform that processes over 60 billion food data points to help manufacturers understand what's really in their supply chain.

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