Chapter 41.1, Problem 1HYEW

White meat or dark? It seems almost everyone has a preference. Dark leg meat has a richer flavor and more fat that makes it moister but some people prefer the milder, leaner white meat of the breast. The difference bet wren dark and white meat are due to their predominant type of muscle fiber. Wild chickens and turkeys are ground-dwelling and usually fly only to escape a fox or coyote or to reach a safe perch for the night. You can probably predict that their breast meat is packed with fast-twitch muscle fibers—good for a brief frantic flutter (as well as our eating pleasure). Given the opportunity, these birds will spend much of the day walking about hunting for food, and their leg muscles are adapted for this prolonged, low-intensity effort with primarily slow-twitch fibers. Blood-carrying capillaries surrounding slow-twitch fibers and oxygen-storing myoglobin within them preside more iron, a darker color, and more intense flavor to the legs of these birds. But what about migratory ducks and geese that fly long distances? As you might predict, their breast muscles consist of dark meat.

How White and Dark Meat Differ?