- Thread starter
- #61
Beekissed
Mountain Sage
Its just not the best meat to be had for health reasons and my family never really got into it, to be honest. Actually, the only meat we eat here, if any, is deer meat, sometimes a little chicken from my culled flock, and maybe a little tuna in salads.
My folks went vegan about 15 years ago for health reasons and we kind of drifted towards that lifestyle. It has paid off in spades for their health and, even the adaptations we have done, has benefitted ours as well.
Pork has just never been part of our diets and has always been considered a bad health choice.
A little info I learned in high school was the final deciding factor for me, really. I know parasitic worms can be found in any mammal, but the description of a particular parasite left me ill. You know all the chewy, almost gristley parts in a ham or bacon that you sometimes spit out and sometimes just swallow with the rest of your bite? Those are places where a worm has encysted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinella_spiralis
A smoked ham or cured ham is not heated to temps found in regular cooking, is then sliced and served in your deli! Now, I'm not ordinarily a germ freak or a phobic eater in any way...I invented the 3 second rule!
BUT...with all the strikes against pork meat...high salt content for hams and bacon(not to mention the chemicals involved in the curing process), the encysted worms, the high fat content, etc. ...well, it just doesn't seem worth it to me to intentionally ingest it. Not when there are other, cheaper meats(deer), available to me if I should hanker for meat. Actually, one can live a perfectly healthy life without ingesting meat or dairy at all, so its just not important to me to include this meat variety in my life....
YOU guys eat all the worms and leave me out of it!!! 
My folks went vegan about 15 years ago for health reasons and we kind of drifted towards that lifestyle. It has paid off in spades for their health and, even the adaptations we have done, has benefitted ours as well.
Pork has just never been part of our diets and has always been considered a bad health choice.
A little info I learned in high school was the final deciding factor for me, really. I know parasitic worms can be found in any mammal, but the description of a particular parasite left me ill. You know all the chewy, almost gristley parts in a ham or bacon that you sometimes spit out and sometimes just swallow with the rest of your bite? Those are places where a worm has encysted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinella_spiralis
A smoked ham or cured ham is not heated to temps found in regular cooking, is then sliced and served in your deli! Now, I'm not ordinarily a germ freak or a phobic eater in any way...I invented the 3 second rule!
BUT...with all the strikes against pork meat...high salt content for hams and bacon(not to mention the chemicals involved in the curing process), the encysted worms, the high fat content, etc. ...well, it just doesn't seem worth it to me to intentionally ingest it. Not when there are other, cheaper meats(deer), available to me if I should hanker for meat. Actually, one can live a perfectly healthy life without ingesting meat or dairy at all, so its just not important to me to include this meat variety in my life....YOU guys eat all the worms and leave me out of it!!!
