The Politics of Food or, Don't Eat Pork

Leviticus 11:7 - And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.

Deuteronomy 14:8 - And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcase.

Why do we eat the foods we eat? Is it because of our heritage, the accessibility of certain foods, dietary restrictions, our religion, or because there’s no reason to eat any differently than our parents or how we ate as kids? Most of us go through the motions, never questioning what we’ve been told or fed. We’re okay with the truths we’ve been given. If it ain’t broke, right? Well, how do we know? What would we be if everything we’ve come to believe suddenly ceased to be true? More importantly, who would we be?

I have many friends who have given up pork for various reasons-health, religious ethics, and/or the thought of pigs as being “unclean” animals. This prompted me to do my own research into pigs and religious rules that forbid the eating of them. This research has been very interesting and in many ways enlightening.

Pigs are amazing creatures. Once the preferred animal of choice for sacrifice to the Greek goddess Demeter, pigs have an excellent sense of smell, are considered to be the most intelligent animals, especially over dogs and cats, and are thought to be more trainable than our canine companions. The pig is also a part of the Chinese astrological calendar. To be born during the year of the pig characterizes a person as honest, tolerant, and good at making friends.

But in the English language, pigs have many a negative connotation. A stubborn person is pig-headed, and one can take on many “pig” like attributes and become as greedy as a pig. Or, one can overeat and pig out, be lazy as a pig, hog all the food, your time, or physical space, and even live in a pigsty. And for those of you who hold a certain opinion towards cops, you may casually refer to them as, well, you know. Even the dust ball covered character in the Peanuts comic strip was called “Pig-Pen.” In a not so negative way, but perhaps crude nonetheless, “porking” is an old American slang term (mostly southern) synonymous with sexual intercourse. (Wouldn’t that be something to bring back into mainstream…)

In parts of Europe, especially France, as well as in China, and the southern United States, pork dominates the dishes, leaving very little parts of the pig left to waste.

So how can a pig be revered in one part of the world, and be detested in another?

First, let’s look again at the scripture above. It’s okay to have a divided hoof, but not okay if the animal does not chew the cud. I bet you’d all like to know what chewing the cud is.

I’ll come back to that later. Why do we consider pigs unclean? Because they like to roll around in the mud? Well, pigs don’t have sweat glands, so they have to do whatever they can to keep cool. (If they have access to clean water, they’ll use the water-not much difference to them) Is it because they can, to use a friend’s phrase, ‘’chew through bone like butter”? IS there something wrong with omnivores (most humans) eating other omnivores (pigs)?

A pig on its own in the wild would certainly eat a little differently than a domesticated pig that has to rely on the feed of the farmer, which might contain scraps of food from the kitchen and various other sources. But is the pig to blame for that diet? It’s not as if the pig can choose to say they want whole grains over potato skin, or whatever pig slop contains.

In Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture, cultural-materialistic anthropologist Marvin Harris proposes that it was not economically feasible for the people of Israel and Arabia, or anyone living in desert climes to raise pigs, as they would be competition for resources. If you’re to believe that, then it’s only natural for laws to be designed to not only keep one to one’s faith, but also to preserve the posterity.

Because the Bible does not specifically mention any knowledge of the connections between food and disease, or hygiene and food, it’s hard to say whether the concern over eating pork was related to trichinosis and leprosy. All that is mentioned is that pigs are unclean. One could also argue that to separate a Jew from a Gentile was to look at what the other did, or didn’t, and since Gentiles ate pigs freely, and a people of a faith have to remain pure by not intermingling with people of an opposing faith, that could just as well be true.

Now that we care about what processes the foods we eat undergo, from feed to fertilizers, hormones to pesticides, farmers are making an effort to feed their livestock better. And since we know that pork has to be cooked a certain way to kill any potential harm to humans, we can enjoy that “other white meat” (it is really red) a little more freely. Besides, pork has been found to be a good source of protein and very high in thiamin, an essential B vitamin.

Whether or not pork is good or bad and should or should not be eaten is up to the individual. It gets us nowhere to look down upon each other for how and why we choose to eat what we eat. What is important is to decide for ourselves what values and belief systems are necessary to hold on to, and which ones are grossly outdated and need to be let go. More focus should be spent on the overall quality of our food, the process our foods go from farm or factory to our table and what becomes of us when we eat the foods we eat.

Otherwise, you might as well be chewing the cud, which is simply the process of eating regurgitated food. Yum.




P.S. Pigs get sunburn.

A little useless information never hurt anyone…