Table of Contents
Chicken meat importance
The effect of food on our health has a particular interest recently. Animal products, especially, chicken meat, consider an important part of our diet compared with other food products. Chicken meat is distinguished for its low energy concentration also it has a high nutrient density as shown in Table 1 according to Moreiras et al. (2005) . Chicken meat considers a good source of protein (20-22%). Additionally, it has a high amount of bioavailable iron and zinc in lower quantities than red meats. As well as, has a vital content of vitamins B (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B12, and vitamin B6). Furthermore, contain a suitable amount of vitamin E, pantothenic acid, biotin and folic. In addition to vitamin D, the prehormone 25-hydroxycholecalciferol 25(OH)D which considers five times active than vitamin D3 (calciferol) is present in meat (Ovesen et al., 2003).
The amount of fats in chicken meat varies according to the edible portion: 10 g/100g whole carcasses, 2.8 g/100 g breast, 13 g/100g thigh with skin and 70 g/100 g skin. Chicken meat has a low total fat quantity and more importantly a higher monounsaturated (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) than other meat (Barroeta, 2007) .
Chicken meat is a main provider of the essential PUFA, in particular, the omega (n)-3. These important fatty acids amounts can be increased more easily in chicken meat than in other meats (Haug et al., 2015) . About 50% of the fat content of chicken meat is the desirable MUFA and only 33% of the less healthy saturated fats. Hence, chicken meat considers healthy meat (Bingham, 2006) .
Nutritional recommendations include the reduction of total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol consumption to prevent the incidence of most common chronic disorders.
Chicken meat consumption
Consumption of chicken meat all over the world continues to rise and expected to increase by approximately 1.6% annually from 2013 to 2022. However, chicken meat uptake per person will increase faster than that for pork and beef as based on these forecasts; poultry consumption will rise by some 9% between 2013 and 2022, compared with gains of 3-4% for beef and pig meat respectively (OECD-FAO, 2013) .
Egypt’s annual consumption of poultry is around 1.2 billion birds, the equivalent of around 1125 million tons of poultry meat. According to OECD-FAO (2017-2026) , the total poultry consumption in Egypt will increase from 993.000 tons in 2017 to 1156.000 tons in 2026 with per capita consumption staying around 9.2 kg during the whole period. This means that the total volume of chicken meat consumed in 2026 will be 14% more than the volume consumed in 2017. This forecast is very reserved and according to other experts’ opinion annual consumption can easily grow between 5 and 7%. It is very significant that imports barely account for 5% of the total poultry consumption in Egypt. This means that at the current poultry meat per capita consumption level Egypt has become almost self-sufficient with internal production (FAO, 2017) .
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