Does 肉 only mean non-preserved meats?


Recently I read the following exchange:

[code]

    A: 何か食べたい？
    B: お肉
    A: 肉か
    朝から肉ねえ。
    俺は冷蔵庫を物色する。
    案の定肉は切らしていた
    A: 昨晩、使い切ったからな。ソーセージもベーコンもハムすら無い
    B: お肉無い？
    A: ああ。無い。肉どころかハムやソーセージなどの燻製ものすら無い
    
[/code]

Judging from it, there seems to be a large distinction drawn between 肉 and 燻製.
Specifically, I'm wondering if in Japanese it's always the case that when you
say `肉を食べたい` you mean that you want to eat non-preserved meats.




You encountered two contextual meanings of 肉. It is fairly common in most
languages to use the same word for a concept as well as in a more narrow sense
for a specific object.

Compare to English where meat in "a piece of meat" is not the same as "being a
meat eater". Japanese distinguishes between a specific object and general
category only by context only, not by grammatical construction, so this kind
of confusion is common.

  1. 肉を食べたい . Meat in the general sense. Including all meat products like sausages and smoked meat. In this statement meat includes preserved meat.
  2. 冷蔵庫に肉がある. A specific piece of raw meat in your fridge.

