Pork stores toxins?

Factual Questions
1

So I watched this video by Joel Osteen, and my first reaction is obviously not to believe a word of science coming from a preacher’s mouth. Fine. Then I come across this story which seems to support the same viewpoint that pigs store toxins in their body fat, which was compounded by the fact that pigs ate garbage and were considered filthy animals. Fine, I’ll still follow along, but…

Is this really a concern *today *though? I mean, pigs aren’t fed garbage on farms today to my knowledge, and I’ve never heard stories of pork poisoning or other significant issues from eating pork (trichinosis is all but eliminated in developed countries). And anything that can eat garbage and turn it into bacon is a miracle in my book.

So is pork containing harmful toxins just based on outdated notions or what?

2

AFAIK it’s just more junk science trying to justify the religious prohibition against pork (which maybe had a reason way back when but does not now).

My mom is one of those people who won’t eat any sort of pork (how she can resist bacon I’ll never know) and so I’ve looked into it. I’ve never, ever seen a reputable cite that properly handled and cooked pork is dangerous or unhealthy - at least other then the cholesterol/fat that comes with eating any meat (not that she’s convinced of course).

Anecdotally I regularly eat pork chops (usually once a week at least) and bacon (more then I should) and I’ve never gotten sick from it.

3

Most Jews, myself included, are okay with the reason ’ G’d said not to’. If there were some medical reason to avoid pork, it would be superfluous.

4

Actually, I understand that the rule does come from a medical reason. Improperly raised and handled pork can transmit parasites to humans.

The priests saw that people who ate pork got sick more frequently than those who didn’t.
The priests wanted their people to be healthy, so they wanted their people to stop eating pork.
But “God told me so” worked better than “well, epidemiological studies… scratch that, we haven’t invented epidemiology yet…”

Pigs don’t store any more toxins than humans or cows.

5

Excep that improperly raised and handled beef, mutton, and goat meat also transmit diseases. Your hypothesis does not hold up.

6

It’s not “my” hypothesis, if it was I would have said so. I specifically said “I understand…” which means “I was told.”

Whether the amount and seriousness of the illnesses transmitted by some animals and others was equally bad, I’m not qualified to answer.

7

ALL mammals - and for all I know, all other vertebrates - “store” toxins in their fat. Which just means that fat-solulable toxins accumulate there. Your own body fat no doubt has detectable toxins, poisons, and contaminants.

Sticking to plants won’t have you avoid toxins, either - plants make toxins as a defense against insects and being eaten by animals.

Fortunately, you body has organs devoted to dealing with this problem (liver and kidneys, primarily).

Assuming no one is feeding the pigs undercooked trichinosis-contaminated meat, and they’re feeding them reasonable wholesome food, pig meat is neither better nor worse than any other form of animal flesh.

8

The article is pure junk science, and I use the term science here very loosely. The author of this also seems to be pushing herethat vaccines, cell phones, and milk all cause autism which makes me want to doubt everything he says further.

If you don’t mind me asking, do you remember who told you that?

9

Yeah, digging a little deeper it seems that’s similar to iReport and that anyone can write articles… Its similar name and logo to Associated Press is also a bit confusing.

10

If you’re on the internet, and you see the word “toxin”, you may rest assured that what you’re reading is crap.

11

I was about to say the same thing, Smeg. “Toxins” is a word that gets bandied about without any specifics about what specifially they are, or why they are bad.

12

Came up in natural science class some 25-30 years ago, when we were talking about parasites.

The teacher talked about different veterinary requirements for different sources of meat being linked to the different risks for those animals, partly due to the “nature” of the animals and partly to how the meat would be treated. The law requiring people to get a vet to inspect a home-butchered hog was relatively recent and still being fought tooth, nail and “forgetfulness” by people who home-butchered; there was no requirement to get a home-butchered lamb, fowl or rabbit inspected. The teacher mentioned that some parasites’ lifecycles included or were more likely to include pigs (“nature” of the animal, I don’t mean impure or anything, it’s just shorthand for things ranking to diet to protein structure - pigs and hens happily eat human shit, lambs and goats not so much) but also in Spain, Italy and France much of the pig is eaten dry, not cooked (salchichón/saucisson/salami, chorizo/pepperoni, jamón/Parma ham, paletilla, cabeza de jabalí) whereas the other animals always get cooked (i.e., different treatment).

13

The linked article by “Ethan” is more loaded with garbage than was ever fed to pigs. To cite just a couple of the crazy elements, there’s the claim that animals accidentally fed pig liver developed cancer “within a few days”. Sorry, that doesn’t happen even with real carcinogens. And the statement that “pigs are often infected with trichina” is grotesquely out of date and wrong.

Pigs many years ago were routinely fed garbage which contributed to the incidence of trichinosis, a painful, debilitating and sometimes fatal parastic infection occurring when people ate pork that wasn’t thoroughly cooked. The rules on this were tightened up long ago, and trichinosis is a rarity. I make sure my pork chops are well done, but even that precaution is probably unnecessary.

It’s likely that at least some of the religious prohibitions against eating pork stemmed from the observation that people occasionally got sick when they did so. These days, you’re more likely to get ill from eating hamburgers contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7 than from consuming pork. So the anti-pork prohibitions among Muslims and Jews have no rational basis, assuming it makes any sense to cite rationality when discussing religion.

A final note about “toxins”: as previously mentioned, the term is heavily overused and misunderstood these days, especially in the realm of alternative medicine where diseases are blamed on shadowy “toxins” and all sorts of treatments are claimed to “flush” out the toxins. There is rarely any recognition that many of the purported toxins are not toxins at all, other substances are present in foods and the environment at levels too low to cause harm (“the dose makes the poison”), and treatments that allegedly remove the toxins have never been shown to do so, including the enemas and flushes that the faithful increasingly are inflicting on themselves.

14

Fat stores toxins but then again, anything in too large of an amount can be toxic…even water.

If your worried about eating pork and getting something, just be sure that its properly raised, properly butchered and properly cooked and you would be fine.

On a side note… I eat meat even tho I know some interesting facts. check this out and research it yourself to see if it is true.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/09/are-humans-carnivores-or-herbivores-2/

15

Is pork toxic?

I love this discussion because so many people come down on the side of no it isn’t because they love to eat it. The people who come down on the side that it is get booed away or told they are fools because of x and y and z.

Let’s finalize this whole argument.

On the one hand g-d said don’t eat it, so don’t eat it.

On the other hand, pork contains parasites that no matter how many times you pork fans say they don’t you can’t get away from tape worms and the others. It’s fact, not fiction, and easily verifiable from a great many accredited institutions and sources. stop arguing it and accept it.

Pork in many forms is loaded with carcinogens, you know, that stuff that causes cancers.

Even if all of the rest of this were not true, this story shows why pork is toxic to produce and eat.

http://www.bu.edu/sjmag/scimag2005/features/hogfarm.htm

Now, if you go read that, you can become a champion for clear air, an advocate for better controls on use of antibiotics, demand change in the raising of pork (beef and other meat animals too), a vegetarian, or add it to your pork addict/apologist arsenal.

Here are some facts for you. Indiscriminate use of antibiotics has lead to a massive increase in bacteria resistance to same substances. Illness and death from these strains has increased regularly and dramatically. Now even if there weren’t a number of said resistant bacteria out there thanks to indiscriminate use of antibiotics, my all time fave has been found in that floating cloud of health hazard over pork farms, and it should scare the pants off you. MRSA, that handy dandy source of death and amputation, has been found in the dust cloud, in pig feces, in the flesh, and on the skin of said animal.

Now I am certain you can find similar information on cow, sheep, chicken, etc farms, but that alone says large scale pig farming, or even small scale where the use of antibiotics is rampant, should be cleaned up or eliminated.

A note to vegetarians: I am not a plant based life form. I do not agree with your suicidal tendencies. I understand my need for animal fat since our organism developed from eating it, survives due to it, and needs it for our brains to properly grow and function. Please do not see me as your brother. I am not out to get rid of meat, merely farm it responsibly.

I am a jew, this is a matter of disclosure, and so I do not like pork from that perspective, but I want you to notice I am addressing this last, even though I started off with that. I do not say you christians should not eat pork because g-d said not to and leave it at that. In fact, eat all the pork you desire to, because g-d was talking to us and not you. We are not the same. But please give some thought to the health issues when you make that decision after, hopefully, reading that report I linked above.

And if you decide to eat that ham sandwich, more power to you. This is America, and it is your right.

Good night, and good luck.

-Jon

16

Oh, baloney.

17

Somehow I doubt this will be the end…

Yes pork can carry parasites which can then infect people, but those parasites are easily destroyed by heat. And parasites are extremely uncommon in recent decades. Trichinosis was once a cause for concern, but there are only a handful of cases per year in the US. There is no risk of any sort of parasite infection from cooked pork.

You have a citation to back that up?

That story sure does show the problems of modern factory farming methods, but it’s not relevant to the food safety of cooked pork. Again, cooking does a good job of destroying pathogens, even scary ones like MRSA.

You know, I agree with everything here. But it applies to all factory farming, and has little to do with any supposed pork toxicity.

You seem to be on something of a crusade against pork… I have to wonder why. You raise some valid points that are equally valid in a discussion of all sorts of modern meat production. But you also have some odd and unsupported misconceptions that pork is particularly toxic.

18

Zombie pigs! Raised up by a nutter, no less.

Pork chops for dinner tomorrow. Ham on Saturday. sharfe can לנשוך אותי.

19

It’s less than that. I don’t have precise numbers around, but it’s been decades since there has been a verifiable case of trichinosis from US domestic pork. There is still the occasional case here and there, but for a long time now, those have all come from wild game.

20

This thread makes me want to go buy a pork roast and cook it medium rare.