Guys,

I have been thinking if Pork is NOT such a great addition to my diet. Are there any reasons (other than religious) to avoid pork?? Any advantages over red meat??

Thanks,

John

I don't eat pork and I never would.  I don't consider it fit for human consumption.  Pigs are disgusting, they eat anything, and there are numerous videos on the internet showing the worms in pork flesh.  People get a piece of pork and pour coca-cola on it, wait about 5 minutes and all of the worms in the pork flesh wriggle to the surface.  It's sick.  If you eat other meat I'm sure you can get everything you need, there isn't any reason to eat pork unless you really love it and eat it for the pleasure I guess.

Thanks!! Might not been then most scientific reply but it sure made a point with the coca-cola. LOL.

I don't eat pork and I never would.  I don't consider it fit for human consumption.  Pigs are disgusting, they eat anything, and there are numerous videos on the internet showing the worms in pork flesh.  People get a piece of pork and pour coca-cola on it, wait about 5 minutes and all of the worms in the pork flesh wriggle to the surface.  It's sick.  If you eat other meat I'm sure you can get everything you need, there isn't any reason to eat pork unless you really love it and eat it for the pleasure I guess.

Ridiculous.

Pigs are extremely fastidious creatures when given opportunity to live that way. They take far more care to separate themselves from their own waste than cows or chicken do. That unscrupulous people farm pigs intensively is no reason to brand the pigs disgusting rather than the methods used to farm them.

Any animal raised in poor conditions will suffer for it. If you feel that way about pork, you definitely should not be eating chicken. Unless it is pastured and organic, but the same would apply to 'disgusting' pigs.

Btw the coke + pork = worms videos were faked, it took 30 seconds research to find that out.  And - http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/porkworm.asp

hmm - but red meat is good though no?

Pig meat in all its myriad forms is hugely popular here in Spain - even today a lot of country people keep one pig a year and the whole extended family get together for the butchering and the making of the various cuts and sausages etc.

I eat it all the time and always have done - I'll leave you with the moment that Lisa declares her vegetarianism.....

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal. 

Pork contains more parasites than any other meat.  You can easily google a list of them.  Pigs will even eat human excrement if it's there.  If you believe that pork is good to eat, that's your choice but it sounds like jcarbon doesn't really want to eat it anyway.  His main question was does pork have any advantages over red meat.  Well, pork is red meat anyway.  In the 80's there was an advertising campaign calling pork "the other white meat" to try and raise sales, but it is actually red meat according to people such as the FFA.  I can't think of any additional benefit you'd get from eating pork that you wouldn't get from other meats.  There have also been numerous reports in america of people getting worms in their brain from eating pork.  There are videos of the surgery to remove the worms and fox news reports about it.

And yet you'll eat chicken.

The problem is intensive farming techniques, not the animal.

You can get various kinds of "worms" in any kind of meat.  You can also get them in fruit, nuts, etc.

You can get it from WATER.

Pork tends to be higher in both omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids than beef; pork fat is just less saturated.

Chickens are majorly nasty animals, at least per my dad who spent part of his childhood on a farm (those chickens were kept in a coop, which probably makes a difference).  Just because pigs can scavenge and eat certain things doesn't mean that free range, pastured pigs WILL eat those things, especially if given a good diet.  I doubt many farmers are pooping in the pig pens.

In the U.S. anyway, trichinellosis/trichinosis, the main pork nasty you hear about, isn't really a problem anymore since they changed feeding restrictions.  Freezing will fix that one, as will thorough cooking.  Per the CDC, "Cases are less commonly associated with pork products and more often associated with eating raw or undercooked wild game meats."

In my googling I saw one site that said that only 7% of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. were linked to pork, but it didn't have a reference so I don't know if that's accurate.

I'd say go for the pork if it's from a source you trust.  Freeze it beforehand if you're concerned.  For what it's worth, my dog has eaten raw pork and venison, after freezing, on multiple occasions and is parasite free.