Yeah it's not every meal but even many of your examples are often eaten with meat. Pancakes often come with bacon, salad often with chicken, and pizza with pepp

Yeah it's not every meal but even many of your examples are often eaten with meat. Pancakes often come with bacon, salad often with chicken, and pizza with pepperoni or sausage. "Almost every meal" might be hyperbole but the prevalence of meat in our food and the sheer volume we traditionally consume is staggering. The USDA estimates about 222 pounds of consumption per capita in 2018 but I couldn't get a good figure on how to translate that in to how much people actually eat (I think that is difficult to do accurately)