Along with being the most commonly consumed meat in the world, pork may also be one of the most dangerous, carrying some important and under-discussed risks that any consumer should be aware of.
Eating Pork products, which are loaded with artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat, is a good way to increase your waistline and increase your chances of developing deadly diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, asthma, and impotence.
No matter how you think about it, pigs are rather dirty animals. They’re considered the garbage and waste eliminators of the farm, often eating literally anything they can find. This includes not only bugs, insects and whatever leftover scraps they find laying around, but also their own feces, as well as the dead carcasses of sick animals, including their own young.
Just knowing what a pig’s diet is like can explain why the meat of the pig can be so dirty or at the very least not so appetizing to consume.
Here are my top 5 reasons why you should avoid pork and have other healthy alternatives instead;
1.) The Pig’s Problematic Digestive System
The first reason as to why the meat of the pig becomes more saturated with toxins than many of its counterpart farm animals is because of the digestive system of the pig.
A pig digests whatever it eats rather quickly, in up to about four hours. On the other hand, a cow takes a good 24 hours to digest what it’s eaten.
During the digestive process, animals (including humans) get rid of excess toxins as well as other components of the food eaten that could be dangerous to health. Since the pig’s digestive system operates rather basically, many of these toxins remain in its system to be stored in its more than adequate fatty tissues ready for our consumption.
Another issue with the pig is that it has very few functional sweat glands and can barely sweat at all, and dont forget that sweat glands are a tool the body uses to be rid of toxins. This leaves more toxins in the pig’s body. When you consume pork meat, you too get all these toxins that weren’t eliminated from the pig. None of us needs more toxins in our systems.
In fact, we should all do what we can to eliminate and cut down on toxin exposure. One vital way to do this is by choosing what you eat carefully, and for me, that definitely includes completely avoiding pork products of any kind.
2.) Trichinosis Dangers
Have you ever heard or did you know that pigs carry a variety of parasites in their bodies and meat? Some of these parasites are difficult to kill even when cooking.
One of the biggest concerns with eating pork meat is trichinosis or trichinellosis. This is an infection that humans get from eating undercooked or uncooked pork that contains the larvae of the trichinella worm. This worm parasite is very commonly found in pork. When the worm, most often living in cysts in the stomach, opens through stomach acids, its larvae are released into the body of the pig. These new worms make their homes in the muscles of the pig and when humans consume this infected meat flesh, they get infected also.
Similarly to what these worms do to the pig, they can also do to humans. If you eat undercooked or raw pork that contains the parasite, then you are also swallowing trichinella larvae encased in a cyst. Your digestive juices dissolve the cyst, but that only unleashes the parasite into your insides. The larvae then penetrate your small intestine, where they mature into adult worms and mate. If you’re at this stage of trichinosis, you may experience abdominal pain, diarrhea, fatigue, nausea and vomiting.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Approximately a week after eating the infected pork, the adult female worms now inside your body produce larvae that enter your bloodstream and eventually burrow into muscle or other tissue. Once this tissue invasion occurs, you experience symptoms of trichinosis which include:headache, high fever, general weakness, muscle pain and tenderness, amongst others.
3.) Drug Resistant Bacteria In Pork Meat
According to reports, 70 percent of factory-farmed pigs have pneumonia when they go to the slaughterhouse. Unsightly factory-farm conditions of filth and extreme overcrowding lead pigs to have an extreme likelihood for serious diseases. The conditions are so bad that the only way to keep these pigs barely alive at times is to misuse and overuse antibiotics.
This overuse of antibiotics has led to the development of “superbacteria,” or antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. The ham, bacon, and sausage that you’re eating may make the drugs that your doctor prescribes the next time you get sick completely ineffective.
4.) Liver Cancer And Cirrhosis
Liver problems tend to trail closely on the heels of some predictable risk factors, namely hepatitis B and C infection, exposure to aflatoxin (a carcinogen produced by mold) and excessive alcohol intake.
But buried in the scientific literature is another potential scourge of liver health — pork.
For decades, pork consumption has faithfully echoed liver cancer and cirrhosis rates around the world. And in statistical models incorporating known perils for the liver (alcohol consumption, hepatitis B infection and hepatitis C infection), pork remained independently associated with liver disease, suggesting the association isn’t just due to pork piggybacking, as the case may be, on a different causative agent.
