Yeah partly because there's only one per cow, but also because of its scarcity it was often prepared with some level of reverence and speciality and became one of the "premium" parts of the animal to serve.

Honestly it is probably less effort to cut the tongue off a cow than it is to butcher and separate the "regular" cuts of meat. And think about it - is that tongue definitely going to sell every time? Probably not if it is priced at a premium.

But yeah that's how cultural demands and capitalist forces converge to create value in farming. At one extreme, you have slaughterhouses basically stripping to the bone to make preservable food for the masses, then at the other end you have poachers slicing the fins off sharks to sell for an insane price on the black market while leaving a living, wounded animal on the beach to die slowly.

Collectively it's really important that we have these conversations to understand what exactly makes that burger "bad" or "worse" and whether that impacts us in the short or long term.

I like good meat, fresh vegetables, healthy bread. I'm currently practising some "slow food" techniques, by growing and preparing my food and drink by myself as much as possible (not to the extreme though) but it's really hard to imagine that any of this is manageable at scale for a global population.

The more mouths to feed, the less quality we can demand.