By Samuel Webb

Turkey:

Turkey has several things going for it, such as tradition. This started in the mid-1500s. A second big factor is price, with turkey costing around £3-4 per kilogram and people eating around 500-700g of turkey at a typical Christmas lunch. This means that each person eats around £1.50 worth of turkey at a Christmas lunch. A third factor is taste, and whilst this is more subjective opinion, I think that turkey is somewhat bland, which makes it not as good as some of the other options on its own. However, it pairs very well with the other traditional Christmas foods, meaning that it does reasonably well in this category. Another factor is health, with turkey being around 1.8 calories per gram, meaning that people are eating a lot of calories worth of turkey. Turkey is not particularly salty to begin with, however, it is normally cooked by adding a lot of salt. A final factor is difficulty to cook, with Turkey being infamously hard to cook due to the fact that it has different meats in it that cook differently, making it very hard to cook properly and often turning out burnt or dry.

Chicken:

Chicken is reasonably similar to turkey, although to a degree it lacks the tradition factor, but if you had chicken instead of turkey at a Christmas lunch it would seem normal. In terms of the price of chicken, it is cheaper than turkey as people will likely eat a similar amount of chicken as turkey, although it costs around £2.75 per kilogram, meaning that it is cheaper than chicken, costing closer to £1.35 per person. In taste, chicken and turkey in my opinion taste very similar, although chicken is maybe a bit blander, meaning it can also pair well with other Christmas foods such as cranberry sauce, gravy and stuffing. In terms of the healthiness of chicken, it has slightly more calories than turkey, but is otherwise nutritionally like turkey. It is however significantly easier to cook, due to the size of a whole bird, however you may need 2 chickens if this is what you are having to serve a significant number of guests.

Ham/Pork:

Ham is a Christmas meat that is sometimes brought out as well as turkey, however, it is usually not the star of the show. Regarding the price of ham, one kilogram of ham costs around £5 per kilogram, meaning per kilo it is significantly more expensive than turkey or chicken, although people eat less ham than turkey, with people eating around 200 – 250 grams of ham. This means that people are eating approximately £1 of ham per person, meaning that it is significantly cheaper per person. However, the taste of ham (in my opinion) is much better than those of turkey or chicken, and it still manages to pair with most traditional Christmas foods. Ham has less calories than chicken per 100g and people eat less, so if you are trying to cut down on your caloric intake then ham is better than chicken or turkey. However, it has over 10x more salt than turkey and chicken. Ham is significantly easier to cook than chicken or turkey, and cooks a lot faster.

Beef:

Beef is something that is not normally considered as a meat for Christmas, however, it would not be completely unheard of to bring out a piece of beef for Christmas. Mince beef costs around £6.14 per kilo, although something like a beef steak costs more like £16 per kilo meaning it is far more expensive. People eat about 200-250g of beef at Christmas, meaning that it is around £1.20 per person with mince, making it the most expensive meat on this list. With taste, I think that beef is delicious and is much better than chicken or turkey. However, I personally believe that ham beats it out. Beef is the most caloric per 100g with 2.9 calories per gram. However, people do eat less of it than turkey and chicken. It has less salt than ham but more salt than chicken. In terms of difficulty to cook, mince beef is a similar level of difficulty to cook as ham.

In conclusion, I think that ham is the winner, followed by beef, then turkey and finally the loser, which is chicken.