Is pork unhealthy?

Mountain Krauss wrote:About Seventh Day Adventists: it's true that they live longer and have less heart disease than the average American. It's also true that Mormons, who do eat meat, live longer and have less heart disease than Seventh Day Adventists.

Many people credit the vegetarian diet of Seventh Day Adventists for their health and longevity. But their health and longevity is far more likely to be caused by other lifestyle differences (which they share with the healthy and long-lived Mormons) than by their diet.

I somewhat agree, I believe much of the shared longevity of SDA and LDS is due to abstaining from Smoking and other habits. I believe if a clean lifestyle (not diet) was the only cause the data would should show more correlations in heat disease rates. While LDS have a lower rate of heart disease than samples . "For both sexes, Mormons had 35% less mortality than expected from US rates for ischemic heart disease, while non-Mormons were not significantly different from US whites " http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/727204

LDS rates for heart disease are significant higher than SDA. "For deaths due to cardiovascular disease in individuals less than 75 years of age, the rates for Adventist men stood at 65 percent of expectation, and Adventist women at 90 percent. Cancer deaths for Adventist men were at 78 percent and at 94 percent of expectation for Adventist women." http://www.llu.edu/public-health/health/mortality.page

There is a common myth around the south as to why everyones just a tad slower than most of the other people in the country its the pork brain worms!
We tend to consume a good bit of that oh so delicious pork in some form or another nearly everyday.
So the next time you talk to an older southern guy with a looong drawn out southern accent you can think to yourself " Awww poor guy, the pork worms done eat his brain up"

I think if you use the Chinese cooking style you avoid all of the various parasites. You boil the pork for a very short while which stimulates the parasite eggs to hatch then you fry it killing the parasites. But you only have to do this to pork that has not been frozen. I guess the religions that banned pork were simply not as quick as the Chinese at figuring out how to avoid parasites without freezers!

"LDS rates for heart disease are significant higher than SDA."

Joseph, I'm having a hard time following your math. The NCBI study you linked to states that Mormons have 35% less mortality from heart disease-- that is, they have only 65% of the expected rate. Meanwhile, the Loma Linda study states that SDA die from heart disease at 66% of the expected rate, while SDA die from heart disease at 98% of the expected rate. Depending on the exact ratio of men-to-women in the study, that means SDAs die from heart disease at 80-85% of the expected rate. Much better than the general population, but worse than Mormons.

"Unless of course it's not an issue of cultural practices but genetics!"

CJ, you are completely correct, of course. I assume that there's little genetic difference between low countries like Switzerland and Sweden and high countries like Germany, Denmark, and Austria-- but that's just an assumption.

I'm a pastured pork farmer, so I'm biased.

First, consider my USDA tables in the back of Mark Shephards "Restoration Agriculture" indicate that comparing lamb, beef, pork and chicken, (in terms of vitamins, minerals, balanced proteins, fatty acids etc) Pork was at the top of the most categories, beef and lamb were together, and chicken far behind.

2 problems: this is national statistics based on conventionally produced meats; and this deals with the positives, not the negatives.

Many of us are privileged to consume the meat we grow, so we don't have to go by gick-fed animals with impending liver failure.

The food chain is also a nutrition chain. Both toxins and nutrients condense up the food chain, and are usually stored in the liver and fat. This is why predator fish (like salmon) are more likely culprits of mercury poison, but better sources of Vitamin D.

Pigs are further up the food chain, and therefore more dangerous/potentially better than herbivores.

Pig diets, and thus pig flesh are more similar to ours. More caution is probably necessary in terms of cooking both for parasites and smaller bugs, although a healthy animal is a healthy animal.

Then the other mantra: pigs are wasteful and environmentally unfriendly? I believe they have a place in the ecosystem, and that harvestable calories is not the only measure of land unit. My pigs root through many acres of woods, but realistically get maybe 75% of their diet from supplements.

I'd say pigs have 2 roles: forest revitalizer/grazer and (for humans) waste disposal. My pigs feast on microbrewery spent brewing grains and commercial cherry byproduct as well as corn based grain mixes.

Nutrition in -> digestive magic/nutrition increases -> nutritive poop and nutritive stored (meat). . This is why we don't rush our animals too early: older animals accumulate more nutrients.
I believe pork can be very healthy

Neither Mormons nor 7th-Day Adeventists have any particular restrictions that they can only eat meat which is 100% safe-to-eat, such as having never been fed any pesticides or developed grains, never having been put into an unhygenic small building with 500 other animal individuals, raised in oceans that are not immediately off the coast if Alaska, etc.  So therefore any diet-related positive health effects as well as any diet-related or health-related differences within and between these groups, obviously cannot be attributed to particular species or families of meat animals or to any particular recipe descriptors (such as "salami" and "lard").

Well.....in a purely unscientific observation....

The Bibles attitude towards pork has a couple of curious points..
When Christ condemned the demon collective Legion, Legion begged and received permission to inhabit the swine rather than be sentenced to damnation, or to wander the world incorporeal.
That makes pork the only other thing to be definitively bedeviled besides humanity.....
The swine committed suicide rather than live with the arrangement, which begs the question;
Why was Christs regard for swine so low that he would allow demons...completely under his authority, to molest them?
Why would he allow the swineherds to become impoverished through the loss?

And Isaiah 65 mentions that those that partake of pork (among other things!) are "a smoke in Gods nostrils" (an irritant), It gives no indication that any amount of antibiotic or length of cooking time, or sanitary process reduces the irritation God has with those whom partake.

It seems that (while it may be arbitrary) God has a simple and abiding contempt for swine!
(And by extension those associated with them?)