What's with the pig resistance?

Sally Fallon is wary of pig meat and has no recipes using it. Paul Pitchford of course doesn't like it but he doesn't like meat anyway. Jewish and Muslim traditional food rules prohibit it.

Now, amongst my latest stash of food books from the library (such fun, so much better than netball or watching tv), I find that Peter D'Adamo of blood type diet fame doesn't seem to like pig meat either.

I love bacon, I love ham and ham soup. I love roast pork and salami. The awesome gelatine-intense stock you can get from pig trotters seems to team with good health messages to me.

So I'm curious as to the origins and reasons for the pig taboo. I'd love to hear of all theories, hypotheses and examples.

[Off to read the rest of the food books...]

Comments

Frances said…
No theories, but when I used to eat meat, the only thing I really couldn't stomach was pig meat so never ate it. Yuck! Used to make me feel ill.

I still feel ill when making ham sandwiches for the kids.
Sharonnz said…
Pig is the only thing between two of mine and vegetarianism.
Corrine said…
My husband the butcher believes it stems from the days pre refrigerators, when preserving food was a bit of an art form. Get it wrong and you died. Myself I think maybe it is more because pigs aren't very clean animals...um not in keeping themselves clean but in what they eat if they are free ranged. When I travelled in Thailand, we took a trek around the hill tribes. There were no outdoor toilets, the pigs cleaned up every thing...and I mean everything. (just my thought, no facts involved)
Gill said…
Interesting. I have some friends who won't eat it beacause of something in the bible, it goes along those lines of the pigs being scavengers. They (the friends) avoid shellfish too for a similar reason.
I like domestic pork, any food you raise in your own back yard actually. Not to fond of wild pig, can't get use to the taste and smell. Would like to like it - free wild food is very appealing.
Isa said…
Nourishing Traditions mentions a study where eating pork leads to abnormalities in the blood - it cautions people to only eat it occasionally.

I love bacon and ham but can't stand pork most of the time - not sure why. It is odd that so many people don't eat it, although many people don't eat beef for religious reasons either
Sandra said…
Thank you for all of your comments - they were helpful and interesting. I do wonder about a taboo on eating the meat of scavengers in a time when using 'waste' so that it is not wasted is seen as such an intrinsic good.

As far as I can ascertain, cooking up trotters and roasting hocks for stock isn't going to cause a problem. I only 'ascertain' that from the absence of any information decrying the non flesh elements of the pig. WAPF style information claims that the fat is good, just not the meat.

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