Poll of the Day > Do you eat pork?

(+) Yeah! (+)

a lot of people do not
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Only when your mom is over
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My mom likes it, i'm not too big on it but i'll eat whatever she makes.

why aren't you big on it? howard stern brought this up before and said that around the time the bible was written that people were getting sick from eating pig and that was the reason
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Yes I do. Between chicken, beef, and pork, pork is probably my overall favorite.

Far-Queue posted...

Only when your mom is over

Man, didn't expect a mom related post till at least several down.
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reported
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DoubleOSnake posted...

why aren't you big on it? howard stern brought this up before and said that around the time the bible was written that people were getting sick from eating pig and that was the reason

It's not that i avoid it all that much, some pork dishes are delicious, but i don't like eating too much meat cause it makes me feel heavy and turns me into a couch potato. I'm trying to lose weight also.

Far-Queue posted...

Only when your mom is over

LMFAO hahahaha!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEgGz7yO2Sw" data-time="&start=5
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Yes. I eat almost all cuts of pig. Be it pork (chop, shoulder, butt, etc), bacon, ham, Canadian bacon, Kevin Bacon, etc.

Serve it up.
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Of course. I eat most meat.
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Pork is my preferred meat of choice.

Pork > Chicken > Beef
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Hell yeah
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I prefer long pork.


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Not regularly, but if you offer it to me I will eat it and probably like it if it is cooked well.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I prefer long pork.

I c wut u did thurr
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DoubleOSnake posted...

why aren't you big on it? howard stern brought this up before and said that around the time the bible was written that people were getting sick from eating pig and that was the reason

That's a common theory for where Kosher and Halal rules came from. if you look at the full suite of Kosher guidelines, it's really just a primitive set of food safety rules, like using separate dishes for meat and veggies. In a modern kitchen, that's mostly limited to cutting boards because the pans get properly washed, but keeping raw meat away from anything else you're working with (especially anything that won't be cooked itself) is generally a really good idea.
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DoubleOSnake posted...

why aren't you big on it? howard stern brought this up before and said that around the time the bible was written that people were getting sick from eating pig and that was the reason

Then why did they farm them for thousands of years between around 5,000 and 2,000 BC until they pretended that God told them it was forbidden? Did they just keep powering through the sickness until the rise of Abrahamic religions?

Firewerx posted...

DoubleOSnake posted...

why aren't you big on it? howard stern brought this up before and said that around the time the bible was written that people were getting sick from eating pig and that was the reason

Then why did they farm them for thousands of years between around 5,000 and 2,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent until they pretended that God told them it was forbidden? Did they just keep powering through the sickness until the rise of Abrahamic religions?

Probably because getting sick from pork sometimes is not the same as getting sick from pork 100% of the time.

And because there are other reasons to raise pigs beyond simply eating them.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Probably because getting sick from pork sometimes is not the same as getting sick from pork 100% of the time.

Indeed. So what's the evidence that pork consumers in the Middle East were sick from eating it 100% of the time? Why did people have to be forced into giving up pork after the Islamic conquests, if pork was a known source of constant sickness for thousands of years? Even if pork was recognized as a risk of occasional sickness, pigs were nevertheless raised for food for millennia; so people were clearly prepared to tolerate the risk. And why would only a caste of priests have recognized this risk? In other words, if the risk was widely recognized, why would people need to invent religious reasons to stop?

If religious strictures were all about dietary health and hygiene, are there any rules that were obviously directed towards avoiding contamination of drinking water (e.g. keep sanitary facilities at a safe distance) -- if not, why not?

Firewerx posted...

Indeed. So what's the evidence that pork consumers in the Middle East were sick from eating it 100% of the time?

Where's the evidence that any culture would need to be sick from eating it 100% of the time in order for someone to decide that they should probably outlaw eating it via religious means?

You won't contract salmonella or e.coli from 100% of meat yet we still legally mandate proper hygiene rules for food preparation in businesses. Honestly, that's just the modern version of kosher and halal rules in a lot of ways.



Firewerx posted...

Why did people have to be forced into giving up pork after the Islamic conquests, if pork was a known source of constant sickness for thousands of years?

Why do people today regularly use any number of products that we absolutely know result in health issues and potentially shave years off people's lives, to the point where we regularly debate whether or not we should outlaw them?

Humans often make poor decisions based on short-term benefit while ignoring long-term or risk-based consequences. Governments and moral systems have often acted to curb impulsive behaviors for beneficial reasons.



Firewerx posted...

If religious strictures were all about dietary health and hygiene, are there any rules that were obviously directed towards avoiding contamination of drinking water (e.g. keep sanitary facilities at a safe distance) -- if not, why not?

In some religions, there are absolutely taboos involving the cleanliness of water or otherwise avoiding contamination.

Even beyond that, there's an argument to be made that any number of religious taboos in multiple faiths evolved specifically to limit potential illnesses and contamination caused by handling dead bodies, to the point that it may have helped inspire the caste and class systems in places like India and Japan (where the people who handled "dead flesh" are pretty much automatically punted straight to the bottom of the social ladder and ostracized/isolated).


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Where's the evidence that any culture would need to be sick from eating it 100% of the time in order for someone to decide that they should probably outlaw eating it via religious means?

If it took them 3,000 years to decide, they were clearly incredibly slow learners.

Note that people were prepared to continue farming and eating pigs, until ordered to stop by religious authorities. And non-Jewish and non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East, in lands where its consumption was restricted but still permitted, continued to eat pork. Why? Were they more blind to the risks?

While prohibitions against eating pork may have been practical, I don't believe it was solely about practicality. It's more like a demonstration of religious power and authority: you take something that people commonly enjoy, and you force them to abstain as a test of their faith -- and it serves to demonstrate the power of that new faith. (Were rules on religious celibacy motivated by concerns about sexual disease?)

Firewerx posted...

If it took them 3,000 years to decide, they were clearly incredibly slow learners.

Again, that statement might actually mean something if it resulted in 100% fatalities 100% of the time.

But something that causes illness only some of the time, or which may have more long-term consequences, is something that isn't going to inspire automatic, knee-jerk rejection immediately. Hell, it took us a hundred years to start phasing smoking out in spite of knowing it was literally shaving years off people's lives (and we still haven't really managed it, as much as we've figured out ways to replace it).

Though keep in mind, we're also talking about people who lack modern germ theory or knowledge of what bacteria or viruses are, and thus lack a framework for explaining why the first dozen ham sandwiches you ate were perfectly fine but the last one made you sick. Trial and error can easily take a very long time to ingrain itself into social practices, and even longer for casual behaviors and traditions to crystallize into actual religious taboo. Especially in a culture where long-term communication is almost nil and all information is almost entirely preserved via oral tradition.


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Is there evidence that pork would have caused sickness noticeably more often than other meats, which surely were all a source of risk in hot climates if not prepared, stored or cooked properly? If not, it would seem to make sense for religious restrictions to ban other meats -- goat, chicken -- as well. When farming other animals for food came to replace pig husbandry, then surely these other animals would have been increasingly recognized as risks in their own right, through bitter experience?

Firewerx posted...

Note that people were prepared to continue farming and eating pigs, until ordered to stop by religious authorities.

People in the US are prepared to continue drinking copious amounts of alcohol before getting behind the wheel of tons of rapidly-moving metal, in spite of being ordered to stop by legal authorities. Nor do we seem willing to stop getting drunk and firing off high explosives every summer in spite of the potential for injuries, death, and fire damages. If WE won't even stop engaging in self-destructive behaviors under threat of fines and prison time in cases where we can literally kill OTHER people, why are you assuming that people with a far more limited worldview would be willing to stop a more beneficial activity that only causes problems SOME of the time, and only really harms themselves?

On top of which, even today, it's pretty well documented that poorer families will eat all manner of unsafe food out of economic necessity. If you're a poor farmer who can't afford more difficult or expensive options, who views pork as a valuable part of your diet in spite of potential risks, you're almost certainly going to continue using it even if it might eventually kill you. After all, better to take the risk of dying from it tomorrow rather than starving today. And in such a scenario, you might NEED to be ordered by a higher authority to cut that shit out.

Humans have always been stupid about food. Agriculture and animal domestication were hugely negative to our lifestyle when we adopted them due to increased labor/decreased nutritional value and the dramatic increase in animal-based diseases entering the human sphere. The Irish population skyrocketed based on the dramatically increased nutritional value of the potato, which in turn led almost directly to the massive famine and starvation that struck when the potato crop failed, and alternate crops were no longer sufficient to support the over-inflated population. Romans ate food we currently consider borderline rotten (as do certain Asian cultures today). Before modern sanitation laws (only about 100 years old), most businesses didn't see anything wrong with rat droppings (and rats!) or large quantities of bugs winding up in food processed in factories (in spite of noted health risks).



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Firewerx posted...

Is there evidence that pork would have caused sickness noticeably more often than other meats, which surely were all a source of risk in hot climates if not prepared, stored or cooked properly?

Trichinosis is a thing, even when meat is otherwise salted or prepared in ways to preserve it against heat and time. There are other forms of similar parasite. In times with imprecise cooking, they become dramatically more of a danger. When pigs are used as waste disposal (see the link I posted above), where they are literally eating human feces, that risk can increase even more.

Salmonella and e.coli are similar diseases affecting other types of meat, but it's hard to say at precisely which point in history they became major factors (and salmonella, at least, ALSO affects pork...). So it is entirely possible that, statistically, pork was a greater danger in terms of diet than other meats, and would in turn inspire restrictions that other meats would not.

The fact that Judeo-Arab cultures specifically zeroed in on pork and shellfish (both of which can still be highly troublesome even today) as foods to avoid tends to suggest that there WERE tangible reasons for banning them simply because "God doesn't like pork".


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So you might say these changes weren't driven by common sense, but rather imposed by a small, priestly caste -- and probably would have been met with some resistance.

Oh, just to elaborate on something:

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Agriculture and animal domestication were hugely negative to our lifestyle when we adopted them due to increased labor/decreased nutritional value and the dramatic increase in animal-based diseases entering the human sphere.

When humans switched from nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyles to sedentary agricultural lifestyles, we basically limited our overall intake of unique nutrients while doubling the amount of time-investment necessary to generate the same caloric intake. In other words, we wound up working twice as hard for a much less healthy lifestyle. Almost the only thing we GAINED from the Agricultural Revolution (in the short term, at least) was the ability to brew alcohol, which some experts are convinced is literally the only reason we DID it in the first place. Basically, cavemen universally handicapped themselves in multiple ways and sacrificed their own health solely because they wanted to get drunk.

In the same vein, most of the severe illnesses we have today (especially the ones most likely to kill us throughout history) almost entirely stem from diseases crossing over from animals to humans. This wasn't so much the case while we were nomadic tribes hunting and gathering, but once we started domesticating animals (which, apart from dogs, almost universally took place AFTER agriculture became the dominant model), the prolonged and close contact (often involving humans living in the same house as their animals, due to bringing livestock into the home overnight to keep them warm, prior to development of separate barns or stables) led animal diseases (including relatively innocuous ones) to cross over to humans, often with severe or even fatal results (for example, smallpox probably evolved from some form of rodent, likely a pest animal that infested granaries once civilization reached a point of concentrated population).

Humans at the time would have had no idea what they were introducing into the species, and it would have taken any number of generations to fully understand the long-term consequences of their actions. Had early hunter-gatherers fully understood the negative consequences of their actions, it's possible they would never have chosen to put down roots in one place, grow plants, and raise animals.

On the other hand, if they hadn't done so, nearly everything we think of as a hallmark of modern civilization wouldn't exist, because almost every facet of our modern culture requires the excess resources generated by agriculture (and the resulting transferable "wealth" that stems from it). Government, religion, philosophy, business and trade, most tools and technology beyond the five simple machines, most sophisticated aspects of art and entertainment - all flow directly from the moment humans decided to act against our own best interests and start growing crops.


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Firewerx posted...

So you might say these changes weren't driven by common sense, but rather imposed by a small, priestly caste -- and probably would have been met with some resistance.

No, what I'm suggesting is that most of human history is a very long proof that humans often need to have common sense hammered directly into their brains by people in a position to threaten them into acting in their own best interests, because humans in general are fucking stupid.


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I don't eat red meat at all.

Pork, the one you love.

Bacon poisoning is the best way to die.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Bacon poisoning is the best way to die.

what?
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DoubleOSnake posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Bacon poisoning is the best way to die.

what?

All that salt and fat will just blow out the left anterior descending artery. You'll die before you even know you're dead.

I do eat pork. I like it.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

DoubleOSnake posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Bacon poisoning is the best way to die.

what?

All that salt and fat will just blow out the left anterior descending artery. You'll die before you even know you're dead.

like you eat a whole pound package of sliced bacon?
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DoubleOSnake posted...

like you eat a whole pound package of sliced bacon?

Speaking as someone who has eaten an entire pound of sliced bacon before, you'd have to go way deeper than just a pound to take yourself out.


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DoubleOSnake posted...

like you eat a whole pound package of sliced bacon?

Sodium is cumulative, and takes a good long time to work out.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

DoubleOSnake posted...

like you eat a whole pound package of sliced bacon?

Speaking as someone who has eaten an entire pound of sliced bacon before, you'd have to go way deeper than just a pound to take yourself out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqD5hDbgLyU" data-time="
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even if it's just little dirty, it's still good, it's still good.
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Yes, although it's fairly low on my meats of preference.
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Yes.
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Very rarely. I don't much care for it, and of the four common animal meats (chicken, cow, pig, fishies) it's probably my least favorite. Tbh I don't like meat very much. I'd cut it out of my diet entirely if it weren't for the fact that my sister likes it and we live together, so...
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I'm probably going to stop. Pepperoni gives me heartburn, and bacon, while delicious, just isn't worth its caloric content.
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Zareth posted...

I'm probably going to stop. Pepperoni gives me heartburn, and bacon, while delicious, just isn't worth its caloric content.

I'm the opposite. I will never stop eating it. Haha.
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Wow that moderation took forever
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Whenever the choice is beef, chicken or pork...I CHOOSE PORK! I just...I just can't help it!
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No. Pigs are too smart to be food imo, like dolphins and dogs except more culturally acceptable.

Fish is something I'll eat. I don't give a shit about fish, they have lizard brains.

The whole bbq thing is a definite yes.