Meal ingredients (chicken meal, salmon meal, lamb meal) are made by cooking animal tissue, removing the moisture and fat, and grinding the dried product into a powder. Because most of the water is gone, meals are concentrated protein sources — "chicken meal" delivers more protein per gram than "chicken," which is 70%+ water before cooking. Named meals (chicken meal, salmon meal) are perfectly acceptable; unnamed meals ("meat meal," "poultry meal") hide the source and are weaker ingredient signals.