lnf said:
Could it possibly be that we are being too literal in our interpretation of the word "strangled"?
Nope. The Greek word refers to killing something by throttling it, without shedding its blood.
By contrast, meat from animals that had been strangled would not have been clean for Jews, because the blood was left in it. Leviticus 17:13-14 seems to imply that the proper way of killing a food animal was to exsanguinate it, and the most efficient way of doing that is by cutting its throat.
It seems to me that, unless there was some religious cult that practiced the rite of animal strangulation (and wouldn't that fall under animals "sacrificed to idols"?), most instances of animal death by strangulation would be purely accidental, and hence, relatively rare.
There were religious cults that sacrificed animals by strangulation, and it's quite possible that the apostles had something like that in mind. It could well be also that many Gentiles routinely killed animals in this way - think of wringing the neck of a bird, for example - and attached no moral significance to it, whereas there was a theological rationale given in the Scriptures for avoiding eating meat with the blood still in it: "the life is in the blood."
Anyway, my point is that death by disease or an unknown cause would be more common than accidental death by strangulation.
Jews would also have avoided eating animals that were killed accidentally (Lev. 17:15).