If we were to rank popular meats by their healthfulness, the order would be (1) fish and shellfish, (2) ruminants (beef, lamb, goat), and (3) birds (duck, chicken, turkey). In last place would be pork.
Given the iconic place of bacon in the Paleo movement, it’s worth exploring the evidence against pork. George Henderson has given us a great place to start: “Nanji and Bridges identified possible problems with pork plus moderate alcohol in 1985 and other researchers have confirmed the pattern since.”
Pork Consumption and Liver Cirrhosis
Pork consumption has a strong epidemiological association with cirrhosis of the liver. Startlingly, pork may be even more strongly associated with alcoholic cirrhosis than alcohol itself!
The evidence was summarized by Francis Bridges in a recent (2009) paper [1], building on earlier work by Nanji and French [2]. A relation between pork consumption and cirrhosis of the liver is apparent across countries and has been consistently maintained for at least 40 years.
Here is the correlation between pork consumption and mortality from liver cirrhosis in 2003 [1]:
The correlation coefficient of 0.83 is extremely high – rarely seen in epidemiology. Correlation coefficients range from -1.0 to 1.0, and a coefficient of 1.0 would indicate that cirrhosis mortality was strictly proportional to pork consumption. The very low p-value confirms the statistical association.
Here is the relation between alcohol consumption and mortality from liver cirrhosis:
The correlation coefficient is lower than for pork consumption.
In epidemiological studies, beef, lamb, and pork are often grouped together as “red meat.” However, this may conceal differences between pork and the ruminant meats. Bridges found that beef actually appeared protective against cirrhosis:
In the present study using 2003 data, a significant negative association between dietary beef and rates of cirrhosis mortality was found…. [D]ietary beef may be a protective factor regarding the pathogenesis of alcoholic cirrhosis. [1]
This would be consistent with considerable evidence, discussed in our book (pp 57-58), showing that saturated fat is protective against liver disease, while polyunsaturated fat causes it. Epidemiological data confirms that saturated fat is protective; here is Bridges again [1]:
[A]nalysis of data from 17 countries indicated that diets high in cholesterol and saturated fat protected (i.e., inversely correlated) against alcoholic cirrhosis while polyunsaturated fats promoted (positively correlated) cirrhosis [8].
Beef is high in saturated fat, low in polyunsaturated fat. Pork is relatively high in polyunsaturated fat.
If the fat composition is playing a role, perhaps it is not that surprising that pork is more strongly related to cirrhosis than alcohol.
Either fructose or alcohol can react with polyunsaturated fat to produce liver disease. Sugar consumption, for example in soft drinks, may be just as likely to combine with pork to cause a cirrhotic liver as alcohol. But no other common dietary component can substitute for the role of polyunsaturated fat in causing liver disease.
Here Nanji and French summarize the correlation of pork with liver disease even in the absence of alcohol:
In countries with low alcohol consumption, no correlation was obtained between alcohol consumption and cirrhosis. However, a significant correlation was obtained between cirrhosis and pork. A similar relationship was seen in the ten Canadian provinces, where there was no correlation between cirrhosis mortality and alcohol consumption, but a significant correlation was obtained with pork. [2]
But fat composition is hardly likely to be the sole issue with pork. Most polyunsaturated fats in modern diets are derived from vegetable oils, not pork. It seems that there must be something else in pork besides polyunsaturated fat that is causing liver disease.
Pork and Liver Cancer
We would expect that if pork can cause liver cirrhosis it will also promote liver cancer, since injured and inflamed tissues are more likely to become cancerous.
Indeed, there is an association between pork consumption and the primary liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma. Nanji and French [3] write:
The authors investigated the possibility that dietary fat, meat, beef, and pork consumption might be factors that would, in addition to alcohol, correlate with mortality from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in different countries….
The correlation between HCC and alcohol was 0.40 (p < 0.05); that with pork consumption was also 0.40 (p < 0.05). There was no correlation with total fat meat, beef, and cigarette and tobacco consumption.
Here is the raw data by country:
Another way of looking at the data is based on countries with low and high incidence of HCC. Countries with high incidence of HCC eat more pork and drink more alcohol, but actually eat less animal fat:
Pork and Multiple Sclerosis
Nanji and Norad [4] looked for other diseases that correlate with pork consumption, and hit upon multiple sclerosis. The connection is remarkable:
A significant correlation was obtained between prevalence of multiple sclerosis and … pork consumption (r = 0.87, p less than 0.001). There was no significant correlation with beef consumption. [4]
As noted earlier, a correlation coefficient of 0.87 is extremely high, and a p-value below 0.001 also shows a very strong relationship. MS is much more likely to befall pork eaters. Such a strong correlation makes it look like pork, or something found in pork, is the cause of MS.
Nanji and Norad further note that beef, the “other red meat,” is not associated with MS:
The correlation between pork consumption and MS prevalence was highly significant. Also, of major significance was the absence of a significant correlation between MS prevalence and beef consumption. This is consistent with the observations that MS is rare in countries where pork is forbidden by religious customs (e.g. Middle East) and has a low prevalence in countries where beef consumption far exceeds pork consumption (e.g. Brazil, Australia). [4]
The correlation between pork and MS may be seen here:
Lauer [5] verified the pork-MS link, but found it to be characteristic of processed pork:
When … quantitative data are taken into account, and a combined factor “smoked meat” or “smoked pork” is formed, the association is very high throughout. This factor is also compatible with the high risk of multiple sclerosis in Scotland and particularly in the Orkney and Shetland Islands and with the only transitorily high incidence in the Faroe Islands [6], whereas coffee can hardly explain both epidemiological features.
Arguments for the biological plausibility of some agents occurring in smoked and cured meat (in particular nitrophenol haptens and their protein conjugates) have been put forward [7]. There appears at present to be no plausibility for the factor “margarine”, which was also not compatible with the temporal pattern of multiple sclerosis in the Faroe Islands. [6]
Conclusion
There are remarkably strong correlations between pork consumption and liver disease, liver cancer, and multiple sclerosis.
What can be behind those relationships? The relatively high omega-6 fat content of pork may be a contributing factor, but it can’t be the whole story. It seems there is something else in pork that makes pork consumption risky.
What is it about pork that is so dangerous, and what does it mean for our dietary advice? That will be the topic of my next post.
Related Posts
Posts in this series:
- Pork: Did Leviticus 11:7 Have It Right?, Feb 8, 2012
- The Trouble with Pork, Part 2, Feb 15, 2012
- The Trouble With Pork, Part 3: Pathogens, Feb 22, 2012.
References
[1] Bridges FS. Relationship between dietary beef, fat, and pork and alcoholic cirrhosis. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2009 Sep;6(9):2417-25. http://pmid.us/19826553.
[2] Nanji AA, French SW. Relationship between pork consumption and cirrhosis. Lancet. 1985 Mar 23;1(8430):681-3. http://pmid.us/2858627.
[3] Nanji AA, French SW. Hepatocellular carcinoma. Relationship to wine and pork consumption. Cancer. 1985 Dec 1;56(11):2711-2. http://pmid.us/2996744.
[4] Nanji AA, Narod S. Multiple sclerosis, latitude and dietary fat: is pork the missing link? Med Hypotheses. 1986 Jul;20(3):279-82. http://pmid.us/3638477.
[5] Lauer K. The food pattern in geographical relation to the risk of multiple sclerosis in the Mediterranean and Near East region. J Epidemiol Community Health. 1991 Sep;45(3):251-2. http://pmid.us/1757770.
[6] Lauer K. Dietary changes in relation to multiple sclerosis in the Faroe Islands: an evaluation of literary sources. Neuroepidemiology. 1989;8(4):200-6. http://pmid.us/2755551.
[7] Lauer K. Environmental nitrophenols and autoimmunity. Mol Immunol. 1990 Jul;27(7):697-8. http://pmid.us/2395440.
[8] Nanji AA, French SW. Dietary factors and alcoholic cirrhosis. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 1986 Jun;10(3):271-3. http://pmid.us/3526949.
via this link:
What about those Okinawan pigs that are fed sweet potatoes? If anything poultry fat is far worse than pork and I see way more people eating drumsticks. I was always curious about this: does feed dictate whether pork and poultry are good for us? Probably fish too, now that there’s the farmed variety. Perhaps ruminants are the best suited to produce tolerable fat profiles in spite of crappy feed.
Very interesting!
Especially given so many paleo peeps seem to be bacon mad!
I cut down on pork considerably since I found the omega 6 was so high in it some time back.
A lot of poultry (especially grain fed) is also high in omega 6 – is there any correlation there?
Chris Masterjohn did an interesting post on Good Lard, bad lard
http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/2011/11/25/good-lard-bad-lard-what-do-you-get-when-you-cross-a-pig-and-a-coconut/
That’s it Paul, you have officially earned the title of “Iconoclast”, wear it proudly!
I’m not one to dismiss evidence, so if your next post in convincing I’ll alter my beliefs accordingly, although I’m guessing that if they controlled for more factors those correlations would be attenuated. I’m not sure by how much, though. They were pretty significant. The issue has my attention.
Lard has a similar fatty acid profile to olive oil unless it’s the not-lard lard from Chris Masterjohn’s article a month ago. But I’m guessing people don’t eat as much olive oil fat as some central Europeans would eat fat from sausages, so the PUFA link remains plausible, assuming that it would then be a major source of omega-6. The part about margerine not being a plausible factor in MS does indeed cast doubt on the omega-6 explanation, though. That is if margarine consumption in those populations was significant, I don’t have access to the paper so I don’t know if it was a significant omega-6 source for them.
There is always the mitigating factor of fatty acid balance to consider. High fat, choline deficient rats with NASH benefit from DHA supplementation http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20625232 If these populations weren’t getting enough omega-3s it could make lard out to be worse than it would be otherwise.
Which reminds me, it is said that the people in Okinawa ate a good deal more pork than the rest of Japan at one time, and were healthier. I honestly haven’t checked the veracity of this claim or how much they were actually eating, but it would be another interesting point on those scatter-plots. Because they were getting omega-3s and therefore would have had lower susceptibility to inflammation associated with “high fat diets”, their lack of disease would be an exception to the rule, assuming that they actually were eating a significant amount of pork fat.
I have recently become privy to the dangers of wood smoke, so I can buy that it might have something to do it, or it could be some other element of processing. Cooking techniques are a big deal, it seems. Cooking and other preparation techniques greatly attenuate associations between “red meat” and instance of cancers, often eliminating them all together.
Maybe that’s what you have for next time? I’ll just wait and see. Cheers.
Hello, I’ve recently been in a deilemma paleo/”traditional” way of eating and vegetarianism. Today, I came across this website called Primal Wisdom where the author is a paleo->vegan convert. He brought up the protein debate, B-12 debate, and even the “wheat” debate…I was wondering if you knew about it and what you thought of issues such as human B-12 requirements and veganism…
I’ve always been curious of how some people claim veganism is for them, while others say the opposite. Could it possibly be the “metabolic typing?”
I stopped eating pork a few months ago and feel much better not eating it. It was a major part of my protein as it was and is much cheaper than beef. My meat bill has increased slightly but now I have moved to eating Ray Peat style my major cost in now in the dairy department.
Wow! This was a shocker! I’m on the edge of my seat awaiting the next installment! 😉
Thanks as always, for such an outstanding blog, Paul. I comment so rarely, but read very faithfully.
mem
interesting.
but i thought both poultry & Olive oil has higher O6 than lard tho.
but i was told to cut down pork by a ND
but i just don’t care for chicken that much. maybe i should switch to beef & fish, eggs.
regards,
Aww, come on, this is no fun at all. Now I have to give up bacon and lard?
I await your follow-up post with bacon-flavored bated breath.
I was about to have my normal breakfast when I read this….but I made a change to it. I am now desperate for the follow up post!
I have questions on the data used… you know what they say about statistics… Especially the consumption per country seems wrong; Poland consuming less alcohol than Germany or Belgium ? And the UK with their bacon tradition consuming less pork than FRance ? Even the US ? Where does this data come from ?
And I am missing a scientific explanation of what is wrong with pork. Statistics can prove anything.
I hesitate to state the obvious but isn’t there another association going on in that chart for MS and pork consumption? – lack of sunshine.
I love pork, just can’t stomach the smell.
Great post though.
Everything you say above is interesting, but it doesn’t change my N=1 observation that chicken thighs and breasts are easier on my digestive system than any other kinds of meat.
Somewhat relevant anecdote: I’m from Belgium and when we eat ground meat, most of the time it will be a 50/50 mix of pork and beef. In France, it will mostly be 100% beef.
We also eat quite a bit of “highly processed” pork sausage, and the Germans and Austrians even more (they’re known for their “beer and sausage”).
Too bad the plots don’t have Spain in there, they eat a lot of pork too but in the form of chorizo (only ingredients: very coarse pork+fat and spices) and sliced off a smoked ham.
Furthermore, lots of beer in our and Germany’s diet, the French drink more wine.
As you can see, none of this anecdotal evidence stacks up in any direction 🙂
I remember reading in Nourishing Traditions years ago some obscure reference to a really old bit of research (early 1900’s) done to show that pork consumptions stimulates immune response much more strongly than other meats.
The Weston A. Price Foundation published an article last year showing that preparation methods made a difference in how pork affects the body.
http://www.westonaprice.org/cardiovascular-disease/how-does-pork-prepared-in-various-ways-affect-the-blood
I love bacon and other pork, but don’t eat a lot of it as it’s harder to get decently-raised pork than it is other types of protein.
Surprising result considering the Okinawan people favor pork.
If the answer isn’t parasites, omega 6, or curing I’ll be surprised to find out what is going on.
Considering the liver disease…if it isn’t Omega 6’s.. would it need to be something that is binding with Choline? Or perhaps some sort of protein mimicry problem causing the MS. Excited to see what you come up with.
I’m also excited for the next Fat Trap post, I hope it will be soon 😀 I’ve been excitedly reading anecdotes about Vitamin D supplementation leading to rapid weight loss and appetite suppression in some deficient patients. I’m curious to see what you’ve come up with on the micro-nutrient front.
Darn. I was trying to get up my nerve to order a heritage porker and try my hand at duplicating my great aunt’s head cheese.
Having lived on and off in Germany for several years, I can testify that pork is the number one meat on the menu there, or at least it used to be. We used to joke about the whereabouts of the pigs, because you never, ever saw one. Which reminds me, I read somewhere that the lard from pigs raised in sunshine is a significant source of vitamin D.
Hi Paul,
First of all thank you for a wonderful book and your excellent blog!
As I’ve learned more about diet and nutrition I’ve developed a strong bias toward traditional ways of eating as my rule of thumb- that’s not always right, but it’s a lot safer as a baseline to work off of. I live in China and as I’m sure you know, pork is a very important part of their meat consumption. I may be substituting my personal observations for the data of the whole of the country, but it seems strange to me that something that’s so strongly a part of their traditional way of eating would be detrimental to their health. Your charts above don’t mention China in particular so I wonder if it’s a confounding data point or if it conforms to the observations above.
Incidentally my experiences watching slim Chinese eat white rice were one of the first things that opened my mind to your view of safe starches. This feels vaguely similar, though I’ve learned enough not to bet against you.
Re: #1 shellfish, Chris Kresser had removed shrimp from his Top 14 foods due to PCB levels.
http://chriskresser.com/the-top-fourteen-foods
Our list of the 14 best top foods, foods that supply vital nutrients including the fat-soluble vitamins, looks like this:
1.Butter from grass-fed cows (preferably raw)
2.Oysters
3.Liver from grass-fed animals
4.Eggs from grass-fed hens
5.Cod liver oil
6.Fish eggs
7.Whole raw milk from grass-fed cows
8.Bone broth
9.Wild salmon
10.Whole yoghurt or kefir
11.Beef from grass-fed steers
12.Sauerkraut
13.Organic Beets
EDIT: If you noticed there are only 13 foods on the list, that’s because I recently removed shrimp due to concerns about PCB levels. Thanks to one of my readers for pointing this out.
A diet containing only these foods will confer lifelong good health; a diet containing only the foods in the first list is the fast track to nutritional deficiencies.
Thanks,
Mark
Interesting. As others have pointed out, you would think poultry would be worse than pork, just based off Omega 6 levels.
If the problem is preparation methods, I wonder about smoked meat in general. I eat kippered herring a couple of times per week and assumed it was fine. I also love smoking pork and chicken, but only do this about once a month, max. It seems odd to me that humans have been cooking meat over open flames for thousands of years (maybe tens of thousands?), yet it’s still harmful.
Oh, gracious! Grandma’s cousin fried everything in lard, salted it heavily and lived to 102.
While the low pork consumption in Israel is no doubt a reflection of a large population of orthodox Jews in that country, there are other groups in Israel who do eat pork. I would find the study more convincing if it compared pork eaters with non-pork eaters within Israel, where other factors might be more similar.
Having just read Dr. Curtis’s “The Cholesterol Delusion,” where he reviews some of the pitfalls of these large population studies, I’m not going to remove pork from my menu just yet. 🙂
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
what about Leviticus 11:9-12..should we include shrimp and shellfish too?
Based on the Weston-price study mentioned by another commentator, I would think there is an as-yet unidentified factor in uncured, non-marinated pork that is the problem. I’m guessing that with the advent of accessible refrigeration, we began to eat less pork that is prepared in the traditional ways, and more that is fresh, uncured, non-marinated. The W-P study showed dramatic effects in the blood from fresh pork, but not from marinated pork, and barely notable effects from cured pork. No effects from any kind of lamb. And they were using pastured pork.
Well you’ve certainly got the PaleoHacks crowd in a tizzy with this one! Can’t wait for part 2 …
Interesting! However, I do not think pork consumption has anything to do with my MS. I have never liked the taste of pork-I think it tastes to me like a pig smells-but I do have strong taste receptors! I’ll admit on the rare occasion that I do eat it it does not agree with my digestion. I do make bacon for my kids (uncured) though, so I am very interested in this post.
Interestingly, my parents heated our house with a wood burner growing up. Most of my siblings-there are 8 of us, seem to have some type of auto-immune issues. We grew up on home grown organic produce and never had soda in the house or much sugar at all. We got lots of exercise-so really except for maybe the wood burner-an ideal upbringing.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10050267
…Here is something that is pretty well-known, though it is in rats. The authors have other studies involving bacon and nitrogen compounds. Note not only the low ACF multiplicity, but also the low body fat.
From the study in the conclusion section –
In summary, the lack of association between alcoholic cirrhosis mortality in 1996 and dietary beef implies that dietary beef may not be factor exacerbating the pathogenesis of alcoholic cirrhosis. Interestingly, the negative correlation between alcoholic cirrhosis mortality in 2003 and dietary beef implies that dietary beef may be protective factor regarding the pathogenesis of alcoholic cirrhosis.
What really stands out in the present study is that regardless the sample of countries, i.e., 15 or 34 (1996) or 33 (2003), the correlations between rates of alcoholic cirrhosis mortality and 1) the product of dietary pork and alcohol consumption and 2) the product of dietary animal fat and alcohol consumption remain significant. However, “none” of these correlations between alcoholic cirrhosis and 1) dietary pork and 2) dietary fat imply a “causal” relationship, although these issues should be investigated further. One should be cautious in accepting these results since they may be an artifact of the limitations associated with using an ecological study design. Another limitation of the present study is the assumption of the immediate effect that pork has on the pathogenesis of cirrhosis. Researchers [1] indicated that data for many countries used in their samples had shown no significant change in pork consumption patterns over the previous decade, i.e., 1965, mid-1970’s, and 1978. Finally, these associations presented may represent a relationship between the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis and some heretofore unknown dietary or environmental factor related to conditions of pork or fat consumption [6,15].
Methinks you’re leading toward Arachadonic Acid, which is in high concentration in pork including loin. And in peanuts/standard omega-6 oils.
A quick google tells me that people with cirrhosis of the liver are often advised to supplement with AA, but that the supplementation is often ineffective. So if this is indeed the hypothesis and it is true, yet another bit of conventional medical treatment needs new analysis.
Very interesting and looking forward to the next article! It will also be interesting to see what the Paleo people have to say about it.
The fact that pork is higher in Omega 6 is enough for me to make other protein choices such as seafood and beef. And I don’t like cooking it. With eating less food because of intermittent fasting, I’m forced to make more careful decisions on what nutrients I do eat. There’s just more nutritious food to eat than pork. Not sure if I’ll give up my bacon on my weekly bunless blue cheese burger with a side of broccoli though. May wait to see what the next article says … 🙂
I guess this is another example of moderation being key. For some reason, I find moderation difficult. Once I like something, I eat it often: sardines, sweet potatoes, broccoli, eggs and beef. And bacon is one of those foods that I’d want to eat often too if it was more convenient.
On another note, I remember hearing from an FDA food safety chemist that he wouldn’t eat shrimp because the rat urine from the ship rats wouldn’t wash out of the shrimp. He had a lot of stories and there were a lot of things he wouldn’t eat – he knew too much! He’d never eat grilled meat, didn’t want to eat processed foods or desserts and ate a lot of fruit and vegetables. I remember him saying 25 years ago, “The public is going to be shocked when they find out the truth about butter!” (Because butter is so much healthier than margarine.) I really should send him a copy of the PHD book – I think he’d love it!
What Dave quoted from the study.
Other than Yudkin’s characterisation of sucrose as “Pure, White and Deadly” I have read nothing which has influenced me in deciding what food to reject, on the grounds of possibly contributing to ill-health.
Slainte
PS
Were it not for the possibility of AFLD, ASH and cirrhosis I would
” . . end up my days drinking Whiskey Galore,
singing . . . .
It’s the Juice o’ the Barley for me”
– Clancy Brothers
So what does this say about Pork Rinds… and Lard? I hope you address that in the second installment.
Paul! ===stamping my foot===
Have you ever seen this post (http://www.foodrenegade.com/pork-bad-for-you/). It’s not exactly a placebo controlled double blind study but it is somewhat interesting nonetheless. According to her, pork produces inflammatory markers when consumed without first being marinated overnight or otherwise processed. In other words, prepare pork the traditional way, that is, with an overnight marinade or into sausage or bacon and you shouldn’t get the same ill issues. However, that still leaves the question of the nitrates used for curing open.
Thanks for this very interesting post, I look forward to the follow up! I had been eating a great deal of bacon & eggs, because it sure is a deliciously fatty way to start the day. However I found that my reproductive system in particular was quite incensed by it (I hypothesize the n-6 PUFA’s at fault)and I have switched to daily salmon instead. I am enjoying inner peace and quiet for the first time since I entered adolescence. Still, I look forward to hearing more about pork, as my husband still wants to eat it, and I need to find out how much I can have without effect.
I would recommending searching Youtube for Joel Osteen’s clip on asking people not to eat pork based on Biblical prohibition. Yes, even after Jesus.
Look it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU5kek3D-4I
If I recall correctly, ‘Food Renegade’ posted a study highlighting what pork ingestion did to the blood when absorbed, it wasn’t pretty. Then they used pork marinated in acidic media for 24 hours and the “volatility” was remarkably reduced. What about acidic marination would change the pork’s composition and at what level, fats or proteins? Anyways, even when I eat bacon I use it to flavor food and when it’s 2/3 cooked I replace the fat in the pan and use coconut oil to finish the cooking. This, from what I understand is protective.
Aflatoxin? Schistosomiasis? Hepatitis?
Very curious to get your thoughts.
More detail on the idea of restricted foods — both Biblical and other:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_animals
How about toxoplasma gondii?
Or worms which cause trichonosis?
Is it a reaction to worm eggs or the protozoan infection?
This seems to me to be a small subset of those countries whose people eat pork. Would there be a benefit to merging the data from the WHO and FAOSTAT data sets for those fields (MS, cirrhosis, pigmeat consumption) and then calculating the correlations? Or are there good reasons to exclude many countries?
I suspect 3 things that might be causing issues in pork eaters.
1: AA
2: The similarity of protein to that of humans is enough to potentially set our immune system off on it- hense, the increase in immune system disorders.
3. Potential viral or bacterial remnants in pork. Pigs are so close to humans at the tissue level that we may be affected by any sort of malady the pig was exposed or experiencing.
Also, if anything — the above charts kinda prove you need to get your sunshine and or vitamin d. The countries with the highest intake of both seemed to have some kind of resistance to auto-immune diseases. Also, both sunshine in vitamin d help with latent infections.
Ever since I saw that blog about the W-P study I wondered if the unmarinated pork was also unseasoned (unsalted). Does anybody know?
Maybe generous salting will already help? What about squeezing some lemon juice over the chops (after frying)?
You ranked fish first in the list of healthful meats. I do love fish but I cannot get over being concerned about contamination, especially from PCB´s. What do you think about it and what fish can I savely eat and how much is safe? Thank you!
Interesting that the fish -> chicken order of healthiest meats is roughly the order of how naturally the animals are typically reared. Fish being mostly wild-caught and chickens living in small dark cages in a factory. Do you think that’s part of the problem? Would a Kitavan coconut-fed pig have any of these problems. Would a fish raised in a box be just as unhealthy?