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Episode 140 - Inside The 1910 Push For Americans To Eat Hippos
May 21, 2025 · 32 min
Today, the average American consumes almost 70 pounds of beef per year and almost 100 pounds of chicken. But those numbers could have been quite different. A century ago, American policymakers pushed for a different kind of meat supply in the United States — hippo meat. In 1910, a Louisiana politician introduced a bill to bring hippopotamuses to the country in the hopes that they would both eat invasive plants and alleviate a meat shortage. https://allthatsinteresting.com/cocaine-hippos credits: ⁠https://allthatsinteresting.com/podcast-credits⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices