"It's Not So Funny..."

Bacon grease, just one more reason why I don't eat pork...

Now the real reasons I don't eat pork are multifaceted:

When I was a boy, my eldest brother, Perry converted reverted* to Islam and so he was constantly asking the family to abstain from pork. At the time, like most families we ate pork regularly: bacon, sausages, ham and chops were a regular feature of our family meals. But when I was 8, my brother Perry died of pneumonia. And so, for the first few years after his death, no pork came into our home. But after a while, bacon and ham reappeared and occasionally my mother would cook things like pigs feet and ham hocks (soul food), I even remember Chitterlings (if you don't know what they are, be glad of that) being cooked for out-of-town relatives coming for a visit. But as for me, I never ate pork again, it was my way of keeping my remembrance of my brother alive.

Later as an adult, I really came down hard on pork for additional reasons including some that are strange. One of those was that I worried I might become a cannibal (Yes, you read that right)! I remember learning in Fire Fighting School that burning human flesh smells like roasting pork. After that, the smell of cooking pork was something I couldn't stand. Another reason I avoid pork is because of health concerns about it.

I think pork is perhaps the most unhealthy meat you can consume and that's because of the unique characteristics of pork fat. Pork fat (lard) has a long history in human food preparation. Once rendered and clarified, it has a long shelf life and it need no refrigeration. Before the advent of modern vegetable oils and shortenings, which in my opinion are markedly worse for you than even lard, it was widely used to fry foods from donuts to chicken. It was even used as shortening in cakes and cookies (Oreos and Ritz Crackers were originally made with lard). But the problem with lard is that it's a naturally saturated fat. It's hard at room temperature the fatty acid styrene, and worst of all it doesn't completely melt at human body temperature.

It's the "hard at body temperature" part that I think make pork fat so dangerous. It doesn't pass my test for consumable fats which is pretty easy, just place a dollop of any fat, or fatty food on your forearm, if it doesn't completely melt within 5 mins, don't eat that. If it doesn't melt, then once it's in your bloodstream it will coat the walls of your arteries and veins and that together with the modern sedentary lifestyle we lead today is a recipe for heart disease and stroke. Now I not a doctor or a food scientist, but I am learned about these things and I can point to proof in my own family. 

My eldest sister died of heart disease and stroke and I always think of her as well when I think about why I don't eat pork. My sister Ora Jean was a contrarian of the first order, if you told her the sky was blue, she'd swear it was any other color. So when pork left our home after my brother's death, she continued to eat it (she was the oldest and moved out on her own that same year our brother died). In fact, she seemed to love pork and cooked and consumed it all the time, including the most unhealthy of pork products, the soul food staple Chitterlings. I remember how at this time of year, she'd have cooked 40 lbs of chitterlings for Thanksgiving and would be planning to cook 40 lbs more for Christmas. Watching her waste away and die in 2009 following the last of many strokes at a relatively young age, I was convinced I had yet another reason to avoid pork.

* Interestingly, Muslims don't believe that you convert to Islam. Their believe is that non-believers who come to the religion were always Muslims, but were simply lost in the spirit world and so when they come to Islam, they "revert" or come back to the one true religion.