Chicken - until recently frowned as dirty & unhealthy, even today some conservative meat eating communities stay away from chicken

Tarkesh Mishra

Updated Oct 29, 2015

Traditionally goat has always been the choice of meat ( if you leave wild animals aside) . In most festivities mutton is the most common meat item. Though you can never be sure if its lamb or goat, its mostly goat as sheep are rarer in India. 
Chicken , which is now the most popular non veg dish , was until recently frowned upon for being dirty and unhealthy. Even today some conservative meat eating communities stay away from chicken, though the stigma is slowly lifting. 
Beef, as is popularly known, is a taboo for most dharmic people, is eaten in some states but more as buffalo meat than cow meat.

What is interesting is that goat is now accepted as the most healthiest meat, even more so than chicken and certainly more than lamb or beef.
The whole concept that white meat is healthier than red meat has been proved wrong in case of goat. In fact chicken meat can actually cause certain e-coli related diseases as it is found that most farm chicken consume fecal matter.
Here's a link comparing different kinds of meat:

http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/eat...

Goat rearing needs to be popularized as a healthy source of meat in India (though personally I would choose fish over any kind of meat, but that's another issue).

https://www.quora.com/How-popular-is-goat-meat-in-India